


The Doctor Will See You

by ChewiesGirl (madametango)



Category: British Actor RPF, Tom Hiddleston - Fandom
Genre: F/M, Friendship/Love, Humour, Love Triangles, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-03
Updated: 2017-07-03
Packaged: 2018-11-22 18:40:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 30
Words: 63,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11386101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madametango/pseuds/ChewiesGirl
Summary: Juno Julia Brannagh has a type - nerdy, Celtic, Shakespearian Actors. It's not her fault it runs in her blood and when her best friend Lis works on two movies about characters called Doctor Laing she realises how that love really goes. Can you really love two men? Or will you have to choose one day.





	1. The Doctor Will See You

The Doctor will see you now!  
“You my dear have a type,” I said giggling into my latte in the crowded little cafe in a leafy London suburb.  
My friend Liz rolled her eyes at me and shook her head.  
“I just have an insane love of polyester and corduroy!” she laughed.  
“Mmmm maybe – but you don’t want to go getting yourself typecast,” I said only half joking as I leaned back to take in my friend and occasional movie co-star.  
She really giggled at that one, putting her hand to her face before running it thoughtfully through her short brown hair and shaking her head again.  
“I wouldn’t think there would be more than two movies set in the 1970s involving a character called Doctor Laing!” she laughed.  
“Most people wouldn’t think there would be more than one – but here you are – your second Dr Laing in three years and both British!” I giggled back.  
We’d just come from the set of her latest movie for a little catch-up and some time to ourselves. Liz was busy on her movie about 70s figure Dr Laing and I had a rare day off from rehearsals for my latest play. My dad was directing, and one thing you have to know about the illustrious Sir Kenneth Brannagh is that he takes no prisoners when it comes to preparing for a role, particularly Shakespeare. Everyone had to be prepared, blood was no free pass to skive off. In fact, blood obligated me to work harder than the other actors in his troupe, to be the best I could be, to live up to my father’s legacy, my mother’s talent and do the Bard justice.  
Not that it was hard.  
I love Shakespeare.  
His words are my passion.  
It’s probably in my blood given I was conceived on the set of Henry V – So I probably had absolutely no say in the matter did I?  
It was as much my obsession as it was my dad’s, I was devoted to the bard.  
But it was nice to have an hour or two to myself all the same.  
And nice to hang with Liz.  
Elizabeth Moss and I had met on the West Wing, she had a re-occuring role, I’d snared a guest spot. I’d done a series of Mad Men with her and we’d been in a movie with me starring and her as my older sister. We had vastly different backgrounds the least of that being our different Nationalities. She was American, married and religious, I was none of the above.  
My mother was half Scottish and she and my grandmother were national treasures, my father was from Northern Ireland and again – national treasure. I’d been born in London and was a free spirit, into my 30s now and still single, still traveling the world. If I had a religion it was paganism or Buddhism but mostly I was terribly agnostic with a side of atheism –one of my godfathers ( an ironic term in this case) is Stephen Fry, what can I say.  
But still, we’d become firm friends.  
So here we were.  
I took my cake fork to the piece of New York-baked cheesecake we were splitting and sighed contentedly. God I loved that stuff. The only thing I loved more than cheesecake for pudding was raspberries. And this one was smothered in them, fresh and ripe, perfectly balancing with the tart taste of the cake, refreshing and light against the solidness of the dessert below.  
I was in heaven.  
Happy sigh.  
“MMmmm why can’t I find a man as satisfying as that,” I hummed.  
Liz laughed.  
“I thought you’d found one!” she smiled at me knowingly.  
I looked at her coyly through my blonde fringe (well I hoped it was coyly I probably looked like a sick cow). I wasn’t going to be drawn into the “you’ve found the perfect man – time to claim him” “you aren’t getting any younger” arguments.  
Okay we have a mutual friend, someone we’ve both worked with – me on two occasions and Lis on one. I may have visited her a few times on set when they were in the same movie. I may have shared a room with someone other than Lis. I may often, when we’re in the same country, share a bed with said male. Does that make him my boyfriend? I’m not sure. We aren’t exclusive but then in the three years I’ve been using him as a bed warmer, a place setter, as far as I know, we’ve both only ever had one other partner each. Well I know I have and he’s told me about one.  
“We’re too busy for the relationship thing,” I said earnestly, hoping she’d drop it quickly.  
She sighed.  
“If you’re not careful he’ll find someone else and you’ll lose Mr Right!” she said shaking her head.  
“Not Mr Right – Mr Hiddleston,” I say smugly and she sighs again at me.  
It’s that kind of day.  
“Dr Laing!” she laughs. “Well my first one anyone!”  
I narrow my eyes at her. I kind of know what’s coming frankly I’m surprised it’s taken her this long to get there.  
“But not you’re first Dr Laing I think,” she says looking me dead in the eye it’s not a question. Those brown eyes are deadly and I’m getting the full treatment.  
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I mumble feigning ignorance and moving to fill my face with raspberry cheesecake before I’m called on to respond again. I don’t want to go here, not now, not here, not anywhere. I’d been on her set this morning, I hadn’t seen her co-star since, well I hadn’t seen him for a while. He was happily married now, I’m happily not, we’re both happy. It was time to let sleeping dogs have a nice rest. But Liz wasn’t one for letting the canine’s recline and so I waited.  
And then it came.  
“And you say I have a type,” she scoffed digging her fork into the cheesecake before I made the whole thing disappear in a flash of silverware.  
“I know yours now, tall, celtic, differently handsome, smart, self-deprecating and a complete Shakespeare nerd,” she said as she moved my pudding to her mouth. She hesitated with the morsel just before she took a bite and slammed home the verbal dagger she’d already unsheathed.  
“Or are you going to insult me and lie to me Juno Julia Brannagh and tell me you’ve never slept with David Tennant?”  
And there it was.  
She was co-starring with her second Dr Laing and I’d shagged them both. I could see this being a long boozy afternoon.


	2. A Little Revealing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Liz discovers Juno's secret.

I spluttered into my coffee like I was shocked.  
She rose an eyebrow at me in that ‘oh really you want to act like a) you didn’t know this was coming and ii) you haven’t known both my Dr Laing’s in every sense of the word particularly in the biblical sense?  
I relented and sighed.  
Again.  
She wasn’t going to stand any of my bullshit and it was kind of nice to tell someone, but not here.  
I took a casual look around the room. We were inside, tucked at the back of the little cafe, sipping our coffee (I’d be disowned as Brit if anyone clocked me with my coffee in my own country– I was usually a tea drinker but coffee was my guilty pleasure and only with Liz – but usually in the US). I cast my eyes around and wondered if the establishment had ears. No one knew about my brush with the Doctor, either of them to be honest and I’d like to keep it that way for a little longer.  
There was the odd rumour. But I kept myself to myself as much as I could and David had been at the cusp of his fame when we had “coupled” while the press were too busy linking Tom to anyone and everyone BUT me.   
So my secret was safe, even my father didn’t know well not for certain, he probably did but had his metaphorical fingers in his ears and was repeating la,la, la over and over trying to make it go away, as father’s are wont to do. Though if I’d have “come out” with either of them I’m sure he’d have gone over-board – the chance to be the head of an acting dynasty. Instead that honour went to Peter Davison in David’s case though he still had a chance with his protégé Tom. I wondered what he’d say if he knew, really knew for certain that Tom was his daughter’s cold-weather hot water bottle, her sexual drought-breaker? That he was my friend with benefits, his current main chance of breeding Shakespearian super babies – sigh that thought wasn’t worth contemplating.  
Did my mother know?   
Well it’s hard to keep anything like that from a force of nature like my mother so she was clued up. She thought the whole Doctor Laing thing was hilarious. It would be a dinner party joke if she could have got away with it. It had been in very private parties where she and my step father and my other godparents Alan and Rima – had teased me without mercy mainly about continuously choosing men like my father – and just as unaware.  
I’d argued that at least my boys had been taller than dad.  
Mum always countered with “trying to improve on the original”.  
A friend or two knew about one or the other.  
Sigh.  
But now Liz knew.  
I did another sweep of the room with my eyes and was satisfied that no-one was close enough or cared enough to spill the beans and then I nodded.  
“Yes,” I sighed.  
“But I’d rather not go into it in public!”  
Liz squealed.  
I mean honest to goodness, squealed.   
I sighed again and shook my head. Two rather well-dressed and well-healed looking older ladies two tables to the north of us gave us withering looks as I shushed my suddenly school-girlish friend.  
“Shhh Liz for god sake,” I mumbled and she demurred and giggled whispering sorry with equal school-girl glee.  
I could see that she wasn’t really sorry and I wasn’t going to escape without some of the details.  
“Oh wow – I can’t believe I was right, I knew the way you looked at each other on set this morning, I knew you had been more than friends,” she hissed leaning across the table to get closer to me, our friends in the north shook their heads in disgust now convinced we were either uncouth and ill-mannered or Lesbians or both. I tried not to giggle, they could probably tolerate either of those things – I wondered how horrified they’d be if they knew we were.......................actresses. And that Liz was...................American. I’m sure though it would be tempered once they knew I was that wayward daughter of Sir Ken and the goddess that is Emma Thompson. But I didn’t really want to stick around to find out. We were supposed to go and do a bit of retail therapy this afternoon but I could see from Liz’ girlish glee that this wasn’t a topic she wasn’t going to let go of.  
The sigh was back.  
“Okay let’s go back to my place and eat a little pizza and drink a little wine and I’ll dish a little dirt just like the old days back on set,” I surrendered.  
She damn near punched the air, pulling back at the last minute when I shook my head again.  
“Sorry,” she whispered, she had that word on a loop now I think.  
“That would be great though,” she added, her eyes sparkling.  
“I miss our boozy, pizza-fuelled girl fests,” she said reaching across the table to squeeze my hand. I was sure our near table neighbours were about to go into complete apoplexy particularly when Liz let out a rather loud and excited “Oh” very suddenly like I’d squeezed her knee under the table, I hadn’t. I was however tempted to kick her – hard.  
“Oh, my god,” she said putting her hand to her mouth. Pity she didn’t leave it there because just then she beckoned me in and whispered in my ear.  
“You were sleeping with him when we met on West Wing weren’t you?”  
I blushed red as all the blood in my body left all my extremities and hit my face like a category one hurricane.  
This was going to be a long afternoon.  
Five minutes later we’d paid the bill and were hoping a taxi for the relatively short drive to my art-deco unit in one of the more fashionable but not prohibitally posh parts of London.   
Liz was still pumping me gently for information. I wasn’t relenting.   
We had rung my favourite pizza place (read the lovely little Italian restaurant, stumbling distance from my house) as soon as we got in the car.   
Woman cannot live on raspberry cheesecake alone (although this woman is kind of willing to try after devouring that pudding of the gods – and grabbing another slice – to go).   
It took us 20 minutes but soon we had the bottle of red open and breathing, vegetarian pizza steaming on the coffee table, blues on the turntable and our feet up relaxing. We’d returned to vinyl around here in recent months for its nicer fuller sound and between us Tom and I had scoured plenty of second-hand places on both sides of the Atlantic and other places around the world for original old recordings, this is one of my favourites. I can’t tell you who it is – it just sits on the turn-table where Tom put it before he went off filming a week or two ago. I like it; it has pretty good memories, pretty damn fine memories, a little bittersweet but fine none-the-less.  
It’s funny how things, music, smells, words take you back to a time and place – instant free time travel without leaving the comfort of your own home.  
Pizza and wine took me back to kicking back after long days on the set of a couple of well-known television shows, red in one hand vegetarian with the lot in the other (pizza that is – though I have met a few vegos with a lot to offer). Anyway, I digress. I actually think those evenings were why I probably chose this place on the top floor of an old shop in the High street of our suburb – two doors to the left is the Italian pizza place two doors to the right an off-licence. Well that and the fact that it has beautiful parquetry floor and original art deco features. My parents weren’t happy; it’s not the usual abode of a celebrity. No gated community, no private townhouse, but there are plenty of security measures – lots of keypads and security, a separate padlocked gate and there’s a back way for privacy and my own rooftop garden above. It’s not my forever home but it’s mine for the time being. It suits my personality and the shopkeepers around me protect my privacy more vehemently than any PR agent, mine or otherwise. I think they like having a pet actress.  
It’s lovely and open plan - one big room at the front which serves as kitchen and lounge and has a view across the street to a leafy park and a spacious bedroom, small study and bathroom/utilities room at the rear. It’s close to the tube and obviously the shops. I’ve sourced a mixture of furniture both antique and new and so it’s warm and comfortable and well, me.   
I love the lounge room, my piano in the corner, a three seater and two seater burgundy red lounge and my beautiful velvet winged chair that wraps around me like a hug all positioned around a disused fireplace – ornate and filled with candles of different sizes, the mantle carries a couple of awards and pictures and above it is my large big screen television.   
I love this room.  
I love my chair.  
I’m really glad that Liz doesn’t know that much about David or Tom for that matter. I wonder briefly if she’s seen pictures of him in burgundy velvet. I remember David’s wife Georgia walking into this room and raising her eyebrow at my chair. I can’t help it – I’ve always loved velvet and the burgundy goes so beautifully with the black and white vintage wallpaper. And the piano – well I play the piano – I love the piano. Okay I probably didn’t have one until Tom and I got a little creative in a way that didn’t involve music on his baby grand in the US one night after one too many scotches but hey. I love the piano.   
Every relationship or encounter moves you forward right?  
And things can remind you of moments in time right?  
Oh god I’ve got a fetish for pianos and velvet and Shakespeare nerds and I’m going to hell.  
Hopefully Liz won’t think I’m too disturbed I think as I wonder just where to start my story about love, lust and nerd love.


	3. Nerd is the word

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Juno meets a young Scottish nerdy actor and they become firm friends.

Nerd is the word  
Surprisingly Liz seems more content to chow down on her pizza and enjoy kicking back with her wine than subjecting me to 20 questions about my convoluted, mixed and sometimes quite bizarre love life.   
I’m happy with that.  
Though maybe she’s waiting for me to make the first move, to offer up some tasty morsel from my past but I’m biding my time. Part of me wants to tell her. I need to talk, I can get a man into my bed but I can’t keep them. Have I ever been in love? I don’t know.  
At the moment I’m trying not to care. I’m doing what I do best – I’m living in the moment. Eating pizza and drinking wine.   
“So how long have you known David?” Lis finally says after our second slice of pizza and our second glass of wine. They’re big glasses, lovely full bowls, proper wine glasses (a present from my maternal grandmother who figures best to get me things I like and can use rather than pushing me for great grandchildren – she’s got other more maternal grandies for that, I’m her free spirit apparently. I can’t argue I love free spirits or free wine I’m not picky). The glasses are big enough to make very short work of a bottle and I’m eyeing off a cheeky little merlot in my wine rack (a neat stack of shelves built into the breakfast bar of my kitchen) as a second helping.   
She was laying in wait obviously, liquoring me up. Good plan and good timing.  
I chuckle at her devious plan, I’m obviously really rubbing off on this woman.   
“Mmm,” I say thoughtfully like I’m trying to remember exactly when David Tennant came into my life. Like it isn’t indelibly etched like a tattoo on my cerebellum or wherever in your brain unforgettable people go to live.  
“We met at Strathford – Royal Shakespeare Company about 15 or so years ago – mmm maybe 16 years ago during Romeo and Juliet,” I say yawning and stretching out and reaching my naked feet out onto the coffee table, like it meant nothing, like I wasn’t instantly attracted to the somewhat shy but very witty man in his late 20s, early 30s.  
“OOOh how romantic, he was Romeo and you were Juliet and you fell in love,” she giggled stretching lengthways on her lounge and turning over on to her stomach. She was now resting her chin on the arm rest of the lounge, one hand on the rest the other on her glass. She was smiling like a dopey cow, like this was a great romantic story.  
I was about to burst that bubble – this was life and life is messy – hell even a Shakespearian romance is messy.  
“Hardly!” I scoffed with a snort.  
“He was Romeo and I was the intern, work experience there to learn stage craft on a break from uni,” I said sipping my wine thoughtfully.  
“I caught his eye, in my Doctor Who T shirt- a rarity back then and the sign of a true fan, a present from the god father (well I can’t call him Uncle Stephen can i?).”  
“I bet you did!” she said saucily.  
“Catch his eye that is!” she added with a wink.  
“Your mind is totally in the gutter today Ms Liz – I’m a bad bad influence,” I said tutting my finger at her.   
“Any way we met, we were friends, we got drunk and became lovers, had some fun and then went back to being friends again.”  
“Heck June is that all I’m getting? I’m married – you know I live vicariously through my single friends and let’s face it you are probably the most interesting of all my friends, there’s got to be more than that,” she whined.  
“Dish the dirt, girl dish the dirt.”  
I sighed and shifted in my seat, I wasn’t getting out of this one easily and I knew it, he’d been an important part of my life, it was a fun time but now we were friends, mates, we’d always be that. Was it disloyal to tell someone about those moments like they were a story that was yours to tell? Would it make her look differently at him to know about the hot stolen sex in the Cardiff hotel, registered under the name Humperdink or Falstaff or Iago?   
He wasn’t that person now.  
He was a respected actor (he was on his way then).  
He was a dad, a husband, a father – he didn’t deserve having his past flashed around. Mind you Liz was hardly News Of The World.   
I had set myself a little failsafe, if my phone rang while we were eating pizza and it’s was David checking in then I wouldn’t talk, well not much.   
There’d been no call.  
But that was okay.   
I was okay.  
“We started pretty much as friends,” I told her.  
“He was my big brother in some-ways, helping me and taking me under his wing, of course he had know idea who I was at first and by the time he’d sussed it out, it was too late and we were already firm friends,” I said smiling at the memory.  
And it was true he was so funny and self deprecating and eager to help a fellow nerd. We’d chat about Who and all things Shakespeare, he took me under his wing a bit and not in a creepy I want to get into this teenagers pants kind of way he was just a nice bloke.   
Of course he’d never actually caught my last name and I hadn’t volunteered who had sired me and brought me into the world so he was completely open and honest and gave me tips he probably wouldn’t have if the names Ken and Emma had been uttered out-loud if Brannagh-Thompson had been mentioned.  
As it was when he’d finally said something about me being a natural and innocently asked if there were any actors in my family – he’d been pretty surprised at the answer – not that it had really come from me.  
Greg our director had laughed, “just one or two Junie right?”  
I’d blushed and David had looked at me with one of those brilliantly quizzical looks of his and my heart leapt, because while it was all about friendship for him, I was a teenager with a crush a mile wide.  
Wouldn’t have done me much good at that point, he was in a committed relationship at the time, though neither of us knew that was about to fizzle and flush down the toilet a year later (well maybe he knew it was on the way out but he didn’t say if he did, he wouldn’t would he?).  
“My mum and dad do a bit of acting I suppose and my grandmother and aunt,” I’d mumbled at the time, worried that this was the end of a beautiful friendship.  
Greg laughed and David’s eyebrow had almost twisted itself into a question mark.  
He cocked his head and narrowed his eyes.  
“What am I missing?” he queried.  
Greg shook his head.  
“You haven’t told him have you?” he asked incredulously.  
I shook my head.  
“I didn’t want anyone to treat me any differently I wanted them to get to know and to teach me not Kenneth Brannagh and Emma Thompson’s daughter,” I said sadly knowing the game was up. I looked down not wanting to see David or Greg’s face, the pity or the disdain for the “poor little girl” who didn’t know how lucky she was.   
Instead I felt an arm go around me.   
I’d expected Greg but instead a jovial Scottish voice laughed the situation off.  
“Ah well we won’t hold that against you Junie!”  
I think I was a total goner from that moment.


	4. Embarrassment of Riches

Embarrassment of riches  
DESPITE my ridiculous school girl crush on a certain Scotsman, we managed to build a pretty strong friendship, staying in touch even after Romeo and Juliet finished and he returned to London and I went back to University. We were nerds and the nerd herd stuck together. Well that’s what David said. And I wasn’t about to argue with him.  
It helped our friendship that he was in a committed relationship for the first year and that I was working my arse off at Oxford, studying literature. It meant that I knew there was no hope of a relationship with David and so I was content to be his friend (and moon over him just a little when I thought no-one was looking). Plus I was working hard, no time for anything but working on my future. I still wasn’t sure I was cut out to be an actress, I harboured thoughts of being a great, and yet starving, writer or script writer (I still do if I’m honest). And so I was hard at work studying English Lit, among other things.   
And David was getting more steady work so we didn’t see each other much over the next two years, but I’d get a call from time to time and we’d catch up when I got to London.   
And then his world fell apart just as mine came together, my first boyfriend was on the scene and he was a free agent, damaged and angry and throwing himself into his work. Part of me wished I could comfort him but life goes on right? Mine had to start sometime and let’s face it; the man is actually closer to my dad’s age than mine. Okay not strictly true but he splits dad and I and I was fairly convinced he was out of my league by then. You could tell he was going to be something great even if the rest of the world hadn’t caught on yet.   
He was getting a few starring roles and renting rooms from a friend by the time I finished university and moved on to RADA.  
So we were back in London and living not too far away from each other. A suburb or two apart.   
I was kind of living with my mother again, though I was more house-sitting than anything. She was spending a lot of time out of the country filming, with my stepfather and baby sister in tow. So I had my own house of sorts and he was living in rooms at Arabella’s place down stairs in a little flatette. He was single and I was still seeing my potential doctor. I was also making new friends at RADA including another tall, geekie Shakespeare nerd; though unlike David he was a lot more of a player and a lad, a well-heeled, well-mannered and polite lad but a lad none-the-less. We’d struck up a bit of a love-hate relationship, we were kind of friends but we were also rivals. He was fiercely intelligent and knew anything but a little too easily led for my taste but I admired his work ethic and we were often paired together to work on things. He was seeing someone and I was seeing someone so the David situation cloned itself and we became friends and rivals but not lovers – not yet. If you haven’t guessed his name was and is Tom.   
So now both the geek boys were in my life but neither were mine and there were no prospects of that happening. In Tom’s case it hadn’t entered my mind yet (Okay the man was 6’2 with big blue eyes, a shock of golden curls and a lazy smile – I’d noticed that but well he was Tom) and in David’s case he was now my big brother and off limits right?  
And then it happened, I’d like to say it’s hard to pinpoint when things changed but it’s actually pretty easy.  
We were seeing a bit of each other, yes RADA kept me busy and YES there were parties but at home I rambled around in the old house on my own. It was a family home, designed for a family and despite the work-load I got lonely.  
So I was often as present in Arabella Weir’s kitchen as David was – more so as on occasions I’d babysit a child or too while I studied (and used small children as a cheap and affective audience – they’re so honest it hurts). David’s comments – on the occasions that he was home and not out either on a date or working he’d wander up to see what I was doing – were more constructive but really it was all fun, us and the kids, performing pieces doing a bit of improve (even though the baby often just sat in the bouncer and looked at us both like we were either the funniest thing she’d seen or both totally insane). I looked forward to those nights – I’d have paid Arabella for those nights.  
By the time I was finishing RADA I had an agent and was starting to get a bit of work including a call to guest star as the crazy British ambassador’s daughter in West Wing. I hadn’t been game to tell David or Arabella for that matter, it was our favourite show. I often came over and we’d watch it as a group, David and I riffing like Donna and Josh, Arabella was often the president. It’s one of my favourite memories from that time.  
There was also talk to that Doctor Who was coming back, actually we all knew it was more than talk and another of our Nerd-herd was actually writing an episode, promising there would be a part for both of us in it! David who had been off recording Blackpool, a little Harry Potter and then Casanova, was beside himself and then.......then he just went quiet on us.   
Something was up according to Arabella, he had a secret and we knew it! We even had bets on who could get it out of him first. But as I was now harbouring my West Wing secret I was a little reluctant to get close enough to find out what he was up to.  
And if it was a new girl, I didn’t want to know.  
We’d both been single for a while at this point, my first romance had fizzled and David had got back on the horse but been thrown again so he was a little gun-shy. He and Arabella teased me about “the boy at school” that I talked about all the time. But there was nothing going on there – he was devoted to partying and work and chasing skirt and he still rubbed me the wrong way. Plus I had no time for such frivolities like boys right?  
I had a five ep story arc in West Wing and the promise of a movie and dad wanted me for a play he was talking about doing next year, life planned out right?  
Yeah what did Lennon say? Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans?  
It happened in late 2005, RADA was a week from ending and we were starting to swap partying for studying though most of us were too busy heading to auditions and trying to work out if we actually had a future in this industry, if we’d eat, or starve.  
I arrived home to find the light blinking on my mother’s answering phone, a usual occurrence which meant I had to either a) ring a relative for their birthday or remember to do something around the house. I was tempted to kick back with a wine and ignore the whole thing. I was tired and washed out and not really up for family niceties or house work or people.  
But I was a responsible daughter and let’s face it, you’ve probably seen you tubes of my mother, she’s formidable you don’t EVER mess with Emma Thompson (dad learned that the hard way). So I listened to message.  
And jumped up and down screaming, so you can guess it wasn’t mum. It was my agent.  
I was in! I was about to start filming on my favourite show, I’d leave straight after finishing up at school and be off the US of A baby!   
I HAD to tell someone.  
I tried to calculate what time it would be where my mum was or my dad for that matter (since they were both somewhere in the world other than my time zone) but in the end I knew there was only one choice. I called a cab (hey I was about to make money I could afford It) and found myself outside Arabella’s front door 15 minutes later. I put the bottle of red I carried down on the step and rang the door bell.  
I should have rung the phone first.  
There was no answer.  
I tried her mobile.  
No answer.   
I rang the doorbell again and then I heard noises, stumbling, tripping, fairly foul language uttered in a decidedly Scottish accent, well David was home at least someone to celebrate with.  
“Juno!” he exclaimed his eyes lighting up as he answered the door. His eyes were beacons but all of him looked as lit up as I felt. He was buzzing with excitement.  
“Sorry, I was just on the phone to my agent,” he said smiling widely.  
“I’m so pleased to see you,” he said ushering me in. I scooped up my bottle and followed him wide-eyed desperate to tell him.  
“Oh god this is perfect, you must have known something – do you want some tea?” he was talking at 100 miles a second and I hadn’t got a word in edgewise.  
I shook my head and held up my bottle.   
He laughed.  
“Perfect, perfect wow you really must have known something – though maybe just one – I’ve got calls to make and you know me more than one red wine and I’m anybodies!!” he laughed, his hand was still on my back as we walked down the hall to our familiar haunt – the kitchen. It felt nice. The air was electric – I felt like I was walking on air and I knew he had something to tell me, I knew I wasn’t the only one with news.  
“Arabella and the family are away so it’s just me and I got some brilliant news and I’m not allowed to say anything to anyone but well I am allowed to tell one person, someone I trust, it would have been Bella but well she’s not here and fuck it, I think you’d appreciate this more,” he said pulling wine glasses and the bottle opener out of the cupboard, he was bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet, buzzing with excitement. If I hadn’t already been excited I would have been infected by his enthusiasm.  
“Me too, I came over to share news with you and Arabella!” I said smiling so wide, my own excitement bubbling over.  
“Really?” he asked his voice going up at the end almost squeaking with excitement.   
I nodded vigorously and smiled like a loon as he poured out two big glasses of wine.  
“Maybe this should be champagne?” he said looking at the glasses.   
I laughed.  
“Too late now!” my eyes were shining, I could feel them from the inside burning with excitement.  
“So who’s going first!!? With the big news I mean,” I said taking a really big sip of my wine and wishing I’d actually thought to bring champagne – I didn’t have any in the house to be honest and I’d grabbed what I had (and yes it was mine and not from mum’s collection).  
He laughed, “Oh well Sandy and Helen raised a gentleman – ladies first,” he said sipping from his own large glass.  
I nodded.  
“I’m going to be in four episodes of West Wing I fly out next week to start filming,” I said, the words tumbling out like a massive unstoppable waterfall. I was grinning even wider and now so was he. His eyes wide as he put down his glass (and I quickly divested myself of mine) and he crushed me into a bear hug.  
“Junie, Junie, Junie that is bloody fuckin fantastic, my little Junie with President Barlett and CJ Craig, Wow, Wow,” he said lifting me from the ground and swinging me round like a rag doll thank god it’s a big kitchen and we were now a little way away from the bench, David isn’t the most co-ordinated human being in the world and it could have ended in disaster.  
It would be just my luck to lose my big chance to a David induced injury!!! “You broke your leg Ms Brannagh – oh such a shame – we can’t hold up production we’ll have to go with our second choice – so how DID you break your leg again?????”  
“Oh god we really do need champagne,” he said finally letting me go (and letting me breathe again) still grinning like a loon.  
“Wow this is quite an auspicious day young lady!!” he said.   
“Ahhh you have news too – I know you do!” I said, taking a sip of my wine before placing it quickly back down on Arabella’s large wooden bench. He followed suit before running his hand through his hair and looking at me seriously, if he could of I would imagine him grabbing on to his lapels and puffing up his chest in pride but as he was wearing tight black jeans, no shoes and his favourite black Fratellis shirt, that wasn’t going to happen. Instead he lent nonchalantly against the counter and narrowed his eyes.  
“You my dear JJ are looking at the brand new Doctor – my agent confirmed it about 20 minutes ago and I just got off the phone with Russell T himself!”  
Okay at this point I scream – this means everything. We are Doctor Who nerds and one of us has just been anointed as nerd god. I jump into his arms.  
Now David is skinny and he looks like it wouldn’t take much to knock him over – a feather might do the trick but, well he may be skinny but he’s actually pretty solid.  
He holds me up; I wrap my legs around his torso.  
I’m chanting “Oh My God, Oh my god!” because, let’s face it in my world he is.  
We’re laughing and he’s jumping up and down with his arms around me and my legs around him and it’s just that moment of total joy, that moment when anything is possible. Anything.   
I don’t know which one initiated the kiss but suddenly lips are on lips and hands are everywhere. I’m wearing a tight pencil skirt and top, low cut but not advertising too much. My skirt has become naturally hitched up and his lips are on my shoulders and neck, my hand is ruffling that hair – it’s long enough to be ruffled but not quite the hair of the doctor not yet. But it’s worth running my fingers through and I make a low sound that I feel everywhere and so does he.  
I thought we’d developed a brother and sister relationship but this is not sibling behaviour. I moan properly and loudly as he manoeuvres us over to the bench and my bottom touches the wooden surface of our friend’s kitchen counter. My legs are still wrapped around him and I pull him closer. His jeans had looked painted on before but are now stretched, more than even stretch denim will usually allow and I pull him even closer to my body, flush to me. The best bits of me butted up against the best bits of him. He feels glorious where he is and I start moving against him, seeking something.............more.  
He moans. And we kiss again. Long and slow, languid and lustfully.   
The phone rings and it seems to bring him back to himself, he breaks our kiss and tries to move away from me.  
“I’m sorry Juno, we’re friends, I don’t want to take advantage of you,” he says.   
But my arms and legs remain wrapped around him. His body is still pressed to mine. He’s long and hard and almost where I need him and I can’t think straight, I kiss him again and now neither can he.


	5. What comes Naturally

What comes naturally  
“Are you sure?” he whispers when we come up for air.  
His forehead is resting against mine and he’s still fighting for breath. I watch his chest heave and I feel mine do the same. It has been quite a “snog-fest” a “makeout session” a “tongue battle”. I feel like we’ve broken an invisible barrier and floodgates have opened but it hasn’t been enough – not yet.  
I nod. My own forehead, a little sweaty from our activities and the overactive heating in this kitchen, slips against his. He moves his head away and long fingers come up to touch my chin. Brown eyes smile and flash.  
“Good I’m glad – I don’t think I could stop,” he says before placing a gentle, much more chaste kiss against my lips. Now I stop and think, his lips are so incredibly soft and his bottom lip infinitely kissable, biteable.   
And then he shocks me, gathering me up against him again manfully and lifting me off the counter. Instinctively my legs do the wrap around thing again. And I’m kissing him and not thinking straight because I take my life into my own hands then and let one of the clumsiest men in the whole UK pick me up and carry me across a room and downstairs to his own lair. There are obstacles along the way like stairs and ottomans and all sorts of things but surprisingly we make it unscathed to his room. I slide down his body in such a way that all of me is still pressed against all of him. My hands slide up under his t shirt and trace his back muscles and spine moving up his body touching him everywhere. It’s too much for him because the next minute his t shirt is gone over his head in one fairly smooth swoop – it catches a little on his head on the way off but I don’t care because my lips have reached his nipples as my hands smooth across the nicest pair of shoulders I’ve had the opportunity to touch and caress.  
David is groaning and his nipples are high beam as I feel those long long fingers nimbly heading up under the back of my shirt and finding my bra strap. He struggles a little to undo it but eventually, there is a triumphant “yes!” followed by a rather dirty word and a groan as I nip the nip I’ve been teasing.  
“I think you’re over dressed,” he mutters darkly and determinedly as those fingers pull my top from my body and my friend breasts spill out.  
His breath hitches.  
“You’re so beautiful Juno, so beautiful,” he breathes, licking his lips and then doing the same to my nipple. I’m in heaven but I want more and believe me as I tug at his jeans and I feel those fingers on my skirt zip, I know there’s a whole lot more coming (so to speak).  
I slide open his zip and pull the jeans down enough to palm his “sonic screwdriver” and find it’s fully charged and ready for operation if you know what I mean. He moans and while my skirt has now slipped down my legs to the floor his jeans take a little more effort, helps, over balances and falls on the floor legs flailing in the air like some strange long grasshopper. It breaks the tension I didn’t know was forming and we laugh like loons as I pull his jeans off and then he grabs my hand and drags me down to him on the plush carpet.  
We roll and he’s looking down at me as I try to put my arms across my chest. I’ve been making all the play up until now but I’m suddenly struck shy. He’s only really my second lover, I’m not counting the drunken fumble with one of my castmates on a filmset last year, and in this case he’s someone I’ve admired for pretty much five years now. Here he is almost naked with me – what if I’m a dud fuck? I know he’s probably not the most experienced guy in the world, he admitted to being a late bloomer one night over too much wine and pizza but he’s got to know more about things than me.   
“Hey don’t do that,” he says gently moving my arms.  
“You’re a beautiful woman Juno one of the most beautiful women on earth,” he said gently kissing my lips.   
I trembled. Have you ever heard the word earth spill from the mouth of a Scotsman?   
It comes out ear-th and it turns me to jelly in his arms.  
“If anything I should be the nervous one, you’re beautiful and talented and I’m a stick figure, the most boring man in the UK,” he says gently.  
“I don’t find you boring or skinny and I’m always in awe of your talent,” I say, gently running my hand over his face, following the contours of his cheekbones and jaw.  
He shivers under my hands and looks at me like he doesn’t quite believe me and like he doesn’t quite believe we’re doing this. And it makes him even more attractive than he was. He is so handsome and so amazing and he just doesn’t know it or at the very least he doesn’t acknowledge it and something in me breaks.   
“Take me to bed,” I whisper in his ear and he smiles and nods his brown eyes sparkling. He moves back off me and stands up offering me his hand as he pulls me up off the floor. Those fingers of his intertwine with mine.   
Somewhere between the bed and the floor his boxers find the carpet and my knickers do the same and I follow him to his bed. Right now watching the muscles move in his shoulders, back, legs and bum, right now I’d follow this man anywhere. Sure he’s lean but he’s well proportioned and beautifully formed.  
We kiss again next to the bed and I see him from the front and I realise that all of him is long and not all is lean. And then we fall together and suddenly we’re touching and feeling and experiencing and his lips are mapping me like there’ll be no tomorrow and those long fingers are dancing, dancing across my skin, across my stomach, dancing closer and closer and then they find what they are looking for and I’m the one that finds nivarna. For someone who calls himself boring, he’s a very creative man and what he does with his fingers and his tongue send me spiralling like my previous under experienced boyfriend never could.   
I’m jelly beneath him and more aroused than I thought possible as he climbs my body, only stopping to turn and snare a prophylactic from the bedside table, before he finds my lips and my neck my ear, he whispers a sonnet. I still smile every time I hear that sonnet. I won’t tell you what it is, I don’t want to be self conscious around you but it’s not one you’d expect. It has the desired affect though and my legs wrap around him and the bit of me that has been wanting him for a very long time finally finds the bit of him that fits, like a puzzle piece. He enters slowly and stops, I want to move but he won’t let me not for a second or two while he adjusts and then – well then it all happens. We’re clumsy and out of time at first and I’m so wet that he slips and slides and I think it will be over in seconds but then it just gels and we sync, I can hear him reciting the sonnet again and we move to it. We fuck in perfect Iambic Pentameter. Until we plummet over and David dies that little death between my thighs.  
We lay then. Wrapped in each other. I watch his chest rise and fall. And I feel relaxed and happy.  
“I can’t believe I just slept with Zoey Bartlett’s best friend,” he smiles cheekily.  
“Well how about me I just became the first woman to screw the Doctor!” I sigh.  
“Ooh I don’t know I’m sure there’s a zygon out there that’s had their wicked way with him!” he says seriously and I roll my eyes.  
“Mmmm and he’s still chasing the daleks maybe their handy with those plungers of theirs?” I giggle.  
“Oy leave the daleks alone,” he giggles, tickling me until things get a little more amorous and we’re off again.   
It’s after midnight when we finally start to settle and I think I would like to stay here forever.  
He tells me about his schedule and I tell him mine. We aren’t going to be in the same place for at least six months or maybe more.  
“It’s probably for the best,” he sighs gently.  
“This is a big adventure for both of us best not to tie ourselves down.”  
I want to argue, I’ve had a crush for five years and now I have this boy in my bed well technically I’m in his but you know what I mean.   
But I can’t, I’m leaving in six days and he’s going to Cardiff for god only knows how long working long hours and living the dream.   
He’s right and I know it.  
“Friends,” I say from where I’m cuddled against him playing with his chest hairs.  
“Friends,” he sighs contentedly before drifting off to sleep.  
But I still live out my fantasy by sleeping the night and when he wakes in the morning I’m gone without saying anything, because, well what is there left to say?


	6. No Second Prizes

No Second Prizes  
“Are you okay?” Tom asks as I head to the bar with him to bring in another round. It’s late at night after our RADA graduation and a big group of us are at our favourite pub, celebrating the end of everything.   
It’s been a long day.  
“Yeah it’s all good!” I say over the slight din of the late night pub– well at least it will be when I’ve had about six more. Not that I add that to my comment.  
Nearly our whole class is here for a farewell drink tonight and I intend to get absolutely shit-faced and do as many inappropriate things as I can. I’m not usually the wild one, I’m the good girl that studies hard and learns all she can. I suck the marrow out of the education process, focussed on learning my craft from as many different sources as possible. But tonight I’m on the loose and feeling like I need to shake off the “good girl tag” and ready to learn the art of partying from as many different sources.  
It’s been a long and tough day and not what I expected my last day at RADA to be.   
Neither of my parents could make the graduation ceremony.   
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not the poor little rich girl neglected by her family who are too busy working. One of both of my parents always make my events or if not them at the very least my step-father and little sister. But while both had every intention of being there for the ceremony, their projects both ran over. It happens and to be honest I thought it would happen to me a lot earlier in my life than now. Ken and Emma are very involved parents, very involved, to involved sometimes. My stepfather Greg is too in fact he offered to fly back with my sister. But I let him off the hook.   
And it’s not that I didn’t have a large group in my corner anyway. That’s the thing with my family, it’s large but not entirely all by blood. My grandmother was there and aunt and my godfather and godmother of course. I don’t think there are many events that Rima and Alan have missed in my life EVER either. And then there were Arabella her partner and kids and David...................and David’s girlfriend.  
It’s four days since that night.  
He rang me when he woke to see if I was okay and that I’d got home safely. He often rings when I go home after staying the night. I’ve stayed the night before, many times. Usually in Arabellas up stairs guest room or in David’s room with him on the couch. But we hadn’t done what we did four days ago before and probably wouldn’t again given the dark-haired beauty that has tattooed herself to him tonight.   
He’d been sweet and worried about me when he rang the other day, everything a big brother should be I suppose. But I still hadn’t expected him to bring his girlfriend to my graduation. Mind you – I don’t think he had either.  
I thought at first when I looked out into the crowd as we took our bows at the end of our ensemble performance that he’d done it to allay any doubts that our little hay tumble was a one off or to protect himself from me.   
I found out later at dinner, when she insisted on sitting next to me and muscling in on a private conversation I was having with Alan that she’d invited herself.   
Don’t get me wrong, I knew about her. But I thought she’d been on the way out. Apparently I wasn’t the only one. According to Arabella David had been quite shocked when Kahli had turned up on the door step yesterday.   
In fact the words “I thought we were taking a break and seeing other people” were used. Arabella had looked at me pointedly when she said “other people” and I’d turned a fetching shade of maroon – wondering if she knew something I didn’t want her to know. I suppose we may have left a half consumed bottle of wine in her kitchen the other night (my main drop – a dead giveaway that I’d been there) and it wasn’t like us not to polish a whole bottle off if we opened one.  
In one of those “girls go to the ladies room together moments” Arabella had mused that possibly our Kahli had heard a rumour about something she and I knew to be true and she’d put a supportive arm around my shoulder. My “family” and I had dinner at a nearby restaurant after the performance and graduation before the class and friends prepared to meet back up to celebrate properly.   
It was a nice restaurant – quiet – not too posh but not somewhere you’d go everyday. Alan and my grandmother were making a fuss of me – Kahli didn’t seem to like me being the centre of attention (at my own event) and she certainly didn’t seem to like the way David had looked at me apparently. Arabella had said as much.  
“She asked me if there was anything between you two,” she’d told me during our bathroom break.  
“I told her of course there wasn’t,” she said fixing me with one of her “Arabella” looks.   
I smiled wanely.  
“No of course not,” I stuttered.  
“So you didn’t sleep with him the other night while we were out “camping” then?” she asked gently sighing on the word camping. Arabella was about as outdoorsy as David – camping was pitching a sheet tent in the lounge room in our world. Being dragged out of the city and into a field with a tent wasn’t her idea of fun – at least it hadn’t been a West Wing night.  
I blushed – dead give-away, way to go Juno!  
I expected a lecture but instead I got and arm around the shoulder.  
“Thought as much!” she whispered.  
“And now he’s saying he’s too busy for it to happen again and you’re dealing with a rabid clingy ex-girlfriend and flying out to the US possibly forever.”  
I nodded not daring to speak in case I burst into embarrassing sobs.   
“I’m sorry it’s such a tough week. Don’t take it personally, David loves you, you know that, he’s just caught up in being popular and getting his dream job and let’s face it we’ve known from the beginning Kahli was a cow.”  
I looked at my friend and we laughed out loud.  
Only stopping when the door opened.  
Thankfully it was Rima.   
“Oh good I’m glad you’re not going to pieces over that pushy cow laying claim to your man,” she said. And I laughed shaking my head and trying to ignore her inference.   
“If she tells me one more time how famous her father is I will actually push her head into Alan’s desert!”  
I put my arm around both of them.  
“I don’t know what I’d do without you pair,” I giggled.  
“Well life wouldn’t be half as interesting!” Rima said matter-of-factly.  
I couldn’t argue.  
But I was on my own now.  
Kahli had insisted on she and David coming to the pub with me, actually David had suggested he put Kahli in a taxi and then he made sure I got to the pub safely. She wouldn’t hear of it.   
“Oh no it will be fun – I remember our farewell night from RADA,” she’d said adding she’d been at the top of her class three years ago.  
David had tried to talk her out of it but she wasn’t having it. He’d mouthed “I’m sorry” and here we were; packed in to our pub with all my classmates and their friends and the man I kind of wanted to sleep with again and his girlfriend.  
“She’s a piece of work do you want me to seduce her so you have a clear shot at David?” Tom said leaning in close and whispering in my ear.  
Okay what?  
“Give you a clear shot at David? He keeps looking at you like he wants to consume you for dinner!” he finishes.  
This shocks me and I look at him wide-eyed.  
He laughs.  
“Oh please everyone knows how you feel about him why do you think I haven’t tried my luck with you?”   
I rolled my eyes.  
“Because you know I have taste?” I snarked.  
He laughed again.  
“Well there is that!” he smiled.  
I smiled back.  
“I just want you to know you have a friend – a few of them really - if you need it! Don’t get wasted just because of some stuckup cow,” he laughed.  
“Get wasted to celebrate your success instead,” he added as he accepted his half of the drinks we’d ordered.  
I laughed then.  
“Get my priorities right?” I asked.  
“Exactly Juno, if you’re going to have a hangover in the morning make sure you enjoyed getting it!”


	7. The morning after the night before

The Morning After and the night before  
I hear a far off buzzing sound.   
Are there are bees in my head?  
The world is fuzzy, I know this without even cracking an eyelid to witness it for myself.  
I’m dreaming about the buzzing and the bees, obviously.  
The buzzing stops, I hear a voice.  
Now I know I’m dreaming.   
The voice is low and a little rough and hoarse like it’s coming out of a sandpaper tunnel. I move my head and go to open my eyes.  
The room spins. I clamp my lids over my eyes again to shut out the pain.   
But the voice doesn’t stop.  
Not dreaming then.   
“Sorry she’s still asleep, I’ll let her know when she wakes up,” the voice says.   
“No she’s fine, “voice adds, hanging up abruptly, obviously not wanting to be caught talking to buzzing bee thing for too long.  
Voice is familiar.  
Gingerly I roll over to where the sound was coming from.  
I inch my eyes open a touch. The voice belongs to a body in the bed next to me, a male voice.   
“Ooooh good morning sleepy head,” voice says – entirely too cheery for me at this time of the morning after what was obviously a big night.  
“Time and location please and any other pertinent details,” I groan out, checking under the sheet to make sure I’m still wearing everything I should be wearing. I am thank god because I don’t need any further complications or dramas. I take a sneaky peek under the sheet at the body of the voice – purely for research and reassurance. I’m too sick to do anything else.  
Voice laughs. He has a nice laugh, distinctive and warm.  
“It’s okay Juno; we shared a bed no bodily fluids were exchanged.”  
I smiled. It hurt. I stopped.  
“Oh thank god, I mean, um,” I was trying not to put both my feet in my mouth at once and offend my sleeping companion.   
He leaned over and whispered in my ear. He was dressed in boxers and a T shirt too close for comfort. Way too close.  
“If we ever get to doing the horizontal polka Juno I’d want you to remember it or at the very least be conscious at the time,” the voice, who we shall now call Tom said gently.  
I shivered and my memories of the night before and this morning started to come back. We’d stayed at the pub for a while and then drifted to a nightclub. David had yawned a lot and called himself old, trying to entice Kahli away from us “young things”. I think he was worried about a confrontation but he need not have, David was my friend and I’d do anything I could to protect that friendship, including obviously not antagonising his girlfriend and not sleeping with him again even though our last coupling had been rather more than just a nice roll in the hay. I wouldn’t say it was mind blowing but it had certainly knocked my socks off (not that I had been wearing any – and I had made sure David had removed his before we got down to it).  
Actually I wondered why Kahli was hanging around us when, from the uncomfortable look on his face, David would have happily taken her home and shagged her silly to get her away from here. Hey I’d have taken him up on the offer.   
But here she was with a group of 20 somethings – she was only a year or so older than most of us so I knew she wasn’t trying to relive her youth. Was she checking up on David and I? Was that it? They were on a break weren’t they? I’d sighed into my drink and my crazy red-headed friend Andrea had rolled her eyes at me and dragged me onto the dance floor and Tom and some of the other guys joined us.  
“You’ve got to stop staring at David and that girl otherwise she’ll never leave,” she hissed in my ear as we danced around wildly to the music.   
“Am I? Do you think she thinks I’m after him?” I said slurring things slightly. I’d been pacing myself but we’d been knocking back drinks at regular intervals for a couple of hours now.  
Andrea rolled her eyes again.  
“God everyone knows how you feel about David Tennant – you mentioned him enough during lessons for fuck’s sake!” she growled.  
“What you need to do is find a nice boy and stick your tongue down his throat here on the dance floor,” she added gyrating around me. “Or even a bad boy or a bad girl,” she finished sticking her tongue in my ear for good measure. I’d turned to kiss her, we’d done it before at a party or two because, well we’re students and you have to practice kissing the opposite sex so it doesn’t feel weird when you really have to do it in a movie or on screen right? Okay we’d been drunk and dared to do it.   
But she was gone and instead I bumped straight into a wall of man admittedly he wasn’t a wide man but he was tall and though we’d had a competitive relationship, his chat at the bar earlier proved we were friends so I pulled him down to me and stuck my tongue in his mouth as requested. He didn’t question it, kissing me back enthusiastically. I’d kissed a few of the guys in my class (on stage and off) over the past two years and as we clashed tongues and he “threw himself” into the role, I wondered why we hadn’t done this before. Mmm because he was a bit of a lad maybe? Because we had wanted to outdo each other at every stage? It didn’t matter now, we were done with RADA and here we were, except I didn’t want him getting the wrong idea so when we came up for air, I whispered “Sorry for this”. He looked towards David and Kahli and laughed like I’d just said the funniest/most sexy thing ever and ran his hands down my body seductively – wow he was good. Then he whispered back “so are we making David jealous” I kissed him just as seductively grabbing him close “no we’re reassuring Kahli that I’m not after him and she can fuck off!” Though the fact that David may or may not been looking at us didn’t hurt. We continued to put a show with a little help from Andrea and the rest of the gang until Tom saw David leave for the little Doctor’s room.   
“I’m thirsty after all this dancing can you get me a drink,” he whispered looking over at where Kahli was sitting. Seconds later as I was at the bar, Tom was talking to Kahli and by the time both David and I reached her she was picking up her bag and readying to leave.  
David hugged me and congratulated me quickly, spoke briefly to Tom and was gone before Kahli could change her mind.  
I let out a slow breath as I watched them leave, David’s eye catching mine as he waved again wistfully and disappeared into the night on the arm of the wicked witch. I tried not to think about what they’d be doing tonight focussing instead on my rather triumphant and exuberant friends. Tom’s eyes were sparkling with mischief and his face was glowing – though that was probably the lager he’d been knocking back. I had to know what he had said to Kahli. Of course Andrea got in first and asked and he laughed looking at me a little sheepishly.  
“I just told her I was trying to get into Juno’s pants and I couldn’t do it with her big brother sitting there watching me like a hawk,” he said running his hand this wild blonde curls as he blushed furiously.  
Andrea and the rest of the group, who’d found their way to us, laughed like drains as Tom smiled again.   
“My hero,” I said rising up on to my toes to kiss him on the cheek, delighting in the blush that crept back across his skin. I wondered if I’d misjudged him a little looking at him now but if I was going to take that thought further, it didn’t happen as Andrea enthusiastically proclaimed it was “on-wards and upwards” time. We continued to party for a few more hours eventually ending up at Andrea’s place – Ooooooh that’s where I was.  
It was coming back to me now – about three of the other boys were out in the lounge and with Dreas flatmate away Tom and I had flopped drunkenly and tiredly on to her queen bed (me being the only girl and Tom too tall to fit on the lounge or air mattresses) and fallen asleep, platonically without any hanky panky – frankly too tired to hank any pank even if we’d wanted too.   
I groaned, my head hurt.  
I looked at Tom, he looked pretty fresh – bastard.  
“I’ve been awake an hour or so and had a couple of painkillers – do you want me to get some for you?” he said reading my mind. I nodded my head – a mistake. I groaned again and he laughed getting off the bed and trudging out to the kitchen.  
The bees buzzed again.  
This time I was awake enough to realise it was my phone. I rolled across the bed and my stomach felt like we were on a boat and didn’t like it much, I can tell you. I grabbed the phone. It was Arabella.  
“Errr,” I grumbled into the phone as the world continued to lurch and spin.  
“Ooooh she lives!” David’s way too enthusiastic landlady um, enthused.  
“I kept getting your new social secretary, is there something you want to tell me about? Something that would explain David walking around here looking like thunder and little miss opportunist looking like the cat with the cream biscuit?”  
“Tom, friend!” was all I managed.  
She let out an excited squeak.  
“Oooh was that Tom, annoying Mr Perfect Tom,” she trilled. I may have mentioned him before.  
“Mmmmm now go away and let me die.”   
Arabella laughed a deep and dare I say it knowing laugh, I wasn’t getting sympathy – not from her. The bed dipped down and a glass and painkillers were thrust in my general direction.   
Ahhh my knight in shiny boxer shorts and Andrea’s boyfriend’s Jurassic Park shirt.  
“Thank you,” I mouthed, juggling the phone between my ear and shoulder while I popped the pills and drank the water.  
Tom nice – Arabella – mean.  
“Don’t worry darling – just ringing to remind you about David’s celebration dinner tonight and to tell you to ring him before he goes a bit mental, well a bit more mental,” she said way too cheerily.  
“I’ll leave you too it now.  
“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do and bring Tom tonight if you like,” she giggled hanging up before I could say anything else. I had choice words – well I would have if my there weren’t woodpeckers in my cranial cavity.


	8. Boys

Boys  
TOM had decided it was time for a shower (no not with me) and had left me alone in the room. I had contemplated running home now, escaping but the room was still doing that psychedelic 60s twisty thing so I snuggled back down under the duvet with my phone.  
You know looking at it intensely doesn’t make a person answer at the end. I worked that out after staring at said telecommunications device for five minutes.  
I had to check in. He was anal about me checking in. He had self appointed himself my protector and big brother while both my parents were away, he was a fucking mother hen – my own mother wasn’t as bad as David. I had missed calls and a voice message and a couple of texts telling me to call him as well as a couple from Arabella – no wonder Tom had acquiesced and answered my phone  
David wouldn’t be best pleased with that but well who fucking cares, it was his fault.  
But I should ring.  
Shouldn’t I?  
Or should I let him stew. Maybe Tom had only answered calls from Arabella and not David.  
Mmmm  
And then................  
The phone rang, scaring the hell out me, I threw it in the air for it’s trouble, luckily the phone fell on the soft duvet and not on the hard unforgiving wood of Lisa’s bedroom floor.  
“Hello?” I asked tentatively.  
“Oh so you do answer your own fucking phone then? What the hell was Tom doing answering for you Juno?”  
Question answered.  
I sighed.  
“Shhhh,” I tried to quieten him down.  
“Sorry am I waking your new toyboy?” he spat back, I can hear his eyebrow lift up with the inflection in his voice. I would have laughed at Toyboy – Tom is actually three months older than me and closer in age than David and Kahli or David and I for that matter.  
“No but your girlfriend might hear,” I groaned. (Point to Juno).  
I hear ruffling, his hand is moving through his hair – a sure sign of his frustration. Mmmm I wish I was the one doing that to him. I wince, thinking hurts, thinking about David hurts. I’m indignant right? If I was awake and not in pain I’d be indignant.  
“I’m out in Arabella’s utility room and Kahli has gone home to get changed and ready for tonight.”  
That almost makes me laugh – the thought of David Tennant the brand new minted Doctor hanging out in a laundry with people’s smalls sneaking to talk to me his..............what ever I am. Friend with benefits?But then I realise what he said – Kahli has gone home to change and reality hits, bites, slaps me in the face. I still have no idea what time it is – I vocalise this with a -“Shit what time is it?”  
“It’s 11am Junie – lost a bit of time have we?” he asks sarcastically.  
“We didn’t get in until 3am and we sat around in Andrea’s lounge for a while and finally crashed at 5am,” I groaned, failing to mention the bottle of scotch being passed around. I’m now realising by my normal standards (ie – two glasses of wine and the odd scotch and then falling asleep) I should pretty much be dead.  
“Look David I’m hung over it was a big night and my FRIEND Tom and I slept in a bed in our clothes because I he was too tall for the lounge and I was the only other woman at Andrea’s place Not that it’s any of your business Mr Kahli and I are over, but nothing happened.  
“And if you’re wondering the kissing was so your fucking girlfriend would stop obsessing over you and I and piss off home so my friends and I could enjoy the night..”  
“You looked like you were enjoying it,” he growls. My head hurt and I was in no mood, I growled back.  
“Tom is my friend and a better one than you’re being at the moment so fuck off and leave me to sleep off my hangover.”  
“So he isn’t buttering your parsnips?” he asked and I laughed slightly at the absurdity of the question and the very David euphamism.  
“None of your business but I think the only one who was buttering parsnips was you with Kahli,” I spat.  
“We didn’t,” he said quietly.  
“I don’t fucking care, I’m in pain and I need to go to sleep. Go a-fucking-way.”  
I hung up. I wished I had an old fashioned phone so I could slam the receiver, hitting end isn’t dramatic enough for how I was feeling.  
My phone rang again.  
I answered it again.  
I’m a glutton for punishment.  
“But you are coming tonight right?” he asked in a smaller more contrite voice.  
“Is Kahli?”  
He was quiet for a minute.  
“I couldn’t stop her,” he said quietly. “Sorry Junie.”  
I sighed. He needed to man up.  
I looked up to find Tom walking through the door, no shoes, jeans slung low on his hips, shirtless and rubbing a towel through the mop of curls. And I smiled.  
“Please say you’ll come Juno – your one of my best friends, one of the first people I told. Please.”  
I smiled slowly at Tom  
“Yes now go away,” I growled  
“Yes dear!” he answered and I could hear the smile in his voice.  
Six hours later I was on my way from my mother’s house to Arabella’s place for dinner with a couple of accessories – a bottle of wine, a Trust Me I’m the Doctor T Shirt and 6’3 worth of wooly-headed man child.  
“So you don’t mind? I’m totally using you again, you know that right?” I said for the third time.  
Tom laughed that easy boyish laugh of his.  
“And so you’ll owe me – any time I need a date no questions asked I know who to call – when you’re in the country that is!” he said, his eyes twinkling. I was beginning to regret this deal. But it was nice having a bit of company particularly as Kahli was back in my territory. I wanted David to tell her properly it ws over but then what would that prove. He couldn’t be mine could he? We were friends and we were going to be in different countries doing very different things. Mind you so were Tom and I and I felt a little sorry that we hadn’t spent more of the past two years being nicer to each other.  
“I’m sorry we weren’t better friends earlier,” I said smiling at him warmly.  
He returned my smile and my sentiment, “Yeah me too but I suppose I felt insecure about people thinking I was there just because I’d done well at Cambridge or because I came from money.”  
I laughed.  
“You ought to be me! Most people thought I was just there because of my parents.”  
“Yeah your parentage is intimidating but then you open your mouth and step on a stage,” he said his eyes twinkling. I punched him and thanked him for that jibe.  
He laughed again, ”No I don’t mean that I mean you’re even more intimidating and brilliant than people expect.”  
“Mmmm nice save!”  
“The thing is Tom – you and I both know it’s hard work that get you into RADA and that keeps you there and I suppose it was nice to have someone to push me to be better and to have someone to set the bar high for me!” I said honestly.  
“Yeah for me too – I’m better because of you!” he said smiling, those big blue eyes twinkling.  
“Awww shucks!” I giggled.  
“So friends?” I ask.  
He nods – “Yes! I’d like that!”  
“Though tonight am I your friend or your new attentive boyfriend,” he asks earnestly.  
“I think we can be friends tonight,” I laughed again. “Unless Kahli goes over the top and then the gloves are off!”  
“Bring it on!” he giggled.  
We were still giggling when we arrived at Arabella’s, her seven year old Leana opened the door to us (with a little help from her dad), squealing to see me there and then stopping in her tracks at Tom.   
She looked at him like he was a giant starting at his feet and working all the way up but I noticed him smile at her warmly and she smiled back deciding he was the BFG.  
“You’re even taller than uncle David,” she said in awe.  
“Is that okay?” he asked hunching down to her level.  
She nodded and he put out his hand for him to shake.  
“I’m Tom!” he said.  
“I’m Leana are you Juno’s boyfriend?”  
Tom laughed.  
“No I’m her friend from acting school is that okay?”  
She nodded earnestly.  
“That’s good because my brother and I want Junie to marry David and become our godmother so we can live with them!” she deadpanned.  
I could see Tom trying not to laugh.  
“Leana remember what I said,” her father Tony warned and the little girl nodded and moved closer to Tom’s ear.  
“You can’t tell Kahli, she thinks she’s David’s girlfriend, she might not be very happy,” she whispered conspiratorially.   
Tom promised he wouldn’t and Tony and I tried not to crack up, I avoided his eyes knowing if we looked at each other we’d be goners.   
Greetings finished we were ushered inside and as we walked down the hall Tom leaned over and whispered “how much are you paying her?”  
I rolled my eyes.  
“Not enough obviously,” I whispered back and he giggled “this could be a fun night!”  
The kitchen was at the back of the house and was a hive of activity thanks to the one-woman whirling dervish that is Arabella. Busy preparing three dishes at once she took time to air-kissed us before greeted Tom like a long-lost friend giving me the thumbs up behind his back (mmm even my adopted extended family are as embarrassing as the ones with my dna –sometimes I have entirely too much family of various kinds and tonight is one of those times).   
Tom handed the bottle of wine he carried to Arabella –earning more air kisses before being ushered out the back by Tony and Leana.  
“Now he’s cute – all those blonde curls to run your fingers through and hold on to when you need to,” she said cheekily.   
“You should keep him as a spare – if you and David don’t work out.”  
I groaned, this was going to be a very long night. Looking out the big double glass doors I could see the rest of the dinner guest out side enjoying a drink on the patio. Mark Gatiss was now chatting to Tony and David’s brother Blair the record company executive and his wife Claire while Tom was now surrounded by a group of our former RSC friends – the usual suspects for a gathering like this. The only person who seemed to be absent from the group was David.   
“So where is the guest of honour?” I asked grabbing the apron that Bella kept for me on a hook in the big wooden walk-in pantry.   
“Down stairs making himself beautiful,” Arabella snorted. “Actually you could go down and hurry him up if you like.”   
“Shouldn’t I be helping you?” I say trying to avoid any type of confrontation.  
“She hasn’t arrived yet and I’ll warn you if she does,” Arabella said with that uncanny knack of reading my mind. I sighed, picking up the parcel I’d put on the table when I arrived, wondering what David would say when he saw me.  
It wasn’t what I expected.  
“Oh good Juno you can help me pick something,” a flustered Scotsman said as I entered his domain. I tried not to laugh. He was clad in dark trousers and little else (not a laughing matter as I remember running my fingers through the perfect smattering of hair on his chest) but it was the clutter around him that gave me pause to giggle. In front of him on his small lounge lay half of his wardrobe. Okay not half but at least three of his button ups and two t shirts.  
I’d never seen him quite so worried about what he was wearing – well not for what was essentially a family gathering.  
“Just wear what you usually wear,” I laughed gesturing to his favourite Fratellis shirt.  
“No but I’m the Doctor now and look how good you look and that boy of yours..................” I flustered.  
I shake my head and despite myself I come over and put my arms around him.  
“I’m wearing the blue velvet dress you said I looked nice in because you said you liked it and it brought out my eyes and Tom is wearing the only decent pair of black trousers he has and a white shirt under his only decent button up – his dad told me as much when I swung the taxi by to pick him up tonight,” I soothed.   
“He looks so young and tall and virile............  
“Too young and not mine,” I said huskily putting a hand on his shoulder.  
He pulled me closer until I was flush against him and then he sighed.  
“I love the feel of velvet,” he whispered in my ear.  
I melted, my insides going all gooey and leaking out.   
Oh god I wanted this man. I wished everything was different, I wished we weren’t going in opposite directions, I wished he’d grow a pair and get rid of Kahli, I wished..............I wished really hard and then..............  
He reached up his hand, touched those long fingers to my face, tipped my face up, his soft lips touched mine...........wishes come true.  
I was floating in that kiss, nothing bring me down, nothing could...........  
“Davey – where are you honey?”  
Accept that.  
We spring apart like scalded cats and I fling my parcel at him.  
“Wear this with the black button up – undone,” I say as I sprint for the stairs before I’m caught in a compromising position by the one person I’d ever come close to punching.   
And I leave him.   
Unwrapping his white “Trust Me I’m the Doctor” shirt still looking at me like a guppy with his mouth opening and shutting.  
And laughter fills the air as I sprint up the stairs.  
“Oh god it’s perfect Junie – perfect!”


	9. Dinner and a Show

Dinner and A Show  
KAHLI eyes me suspiciously as I sprint up David’s stairs (totally relieved that she had decided to go through Arabella’s and not through David’s separate side entrance). I smile sweetly at her like I haven’t just been up close and personal with the man she thinks is her boyfriend.  
“Go straight down- he was having a crisis about what to wear but he’s all good now!” I say (those acting lessons at RADA paying dividends already).  
She gives me a superior look and sashays down as I head back to the kitchen where Arabella is manfully putting together a large plate of very impressive nibbles.  
She looks like something straight out of her Posh Nosh program that David and I had both been roped into appearing on and I try not to laugh. She plays it up to the hilt and soon we are both in Posh Nosh mode. I sense she is trying to take my mind off the fact that the Kahlinator has David in her clutches. Maybe she knows what we were doing down there. I suspect she does – or at least she hopes she does. She’s a naughty match-maker and I wonder for a moment if getting David and I together has always been a plan. I’m too young for him...........and yet.  
My thoughts are interrupted by the amazing aroma that fills the air – Arabella has opened the oven door and unleashed the full sensory overload of her roasting beef. I take it in. I love coming here just for this. My mother has taught me many things, but cooking isn’t really one of them. Arabella has taught me that and I’m grateful. The beef smells amazing and then it hits me – beef. Is Kahli Hindi? Can she eat beef? Two of my best friends are Indians and now I’m feeling like a louse.   
Arabella turns the roast over and moves the potatoes around in the pan as I continue to cut and dice for the platter I’m putting together. Trying not to think about why David and Kahli haven’t made it up the stairs yet and therefore slice off something I need – like a finger.  
A second pan is lifted from the oven and this one contains lamb and more vegetables. I’m a little vindictively disappointed that Arabella hasn’t been culturally insensitive, it’s mean and racist and I pride myself in being neither of these things ever. I instantly feel really bad and wish bad things upon myself. No man is worth being a bigot and I don’t even know what religion she is and if she will eat beef. Oh god I’m rambling and I’m going to hell and I’m not even Christian. Her being here has rattled me again, let’s face it him kissing me has rattled me again and I’m in danger of losing it.  
I take a deep breath in time for Tom to come in through the door.  
“So do you ladies need a hand with anything?” he offers.  
Arabella smiles and coos – “Sweet boy! Yes you can help serve the entrees and get this one out and mingling,” she says.  
“And ask Tony to get her a drink – she’ll have a Scotch,” she adds.  
Arabella has been reading my mind again or perhaps its etched across my face so obviously that I’m telegraphing it clearly and that won’t do in front of the wicked witch of the West.   
I use to like Kahli but that was before and now I just feel threatened.   
I take the plate and follow Tom out into the back yard. It’s quite a warm summer night in London, a rare moment to enjoy the great outdoors. Well a small London backyard but still. We mix and mingle and hand the food around, everyone is getting pretty hungry, still waiting for the guest of honour to appear.  
Then I see Blair smile and I turn as he says “here’s the man of the hour!”  
I expect to see him looking a little dishevelled after whatever he and Kahli have been up to but instead there isn’t a hair out of place though Kahli is still clinging to him like a star fish on the side of a fish tank.   
“Oh here he is The Doctor,” Mark says beside me.   
“Thank you, thank you fans!” David jokes. If he’d been anywhere else (except maybe on stage) he would have been humble and wondering what the fuss was. But he felt comfortable with us – his family, both biologically and adopted.  
“Oh isn’t he marvellous,” Kahli simpered.   
“My boyfriend Doctor Who!”  
David and I exchanged nerd glances but before either of us could correct her Blair laughed.  
“Oh god don’t call him Doctor Who in front of the nerds Kahli you’ll get yourself sent to Skyro,” he said in mock horror.  
“Skaro!” Mark corrected.  
“See what I mean.”Blair laughed.  
“The character is The Doctor.” David explained to a chorus of “nerd!!!” from our RSC buddies.  
He was wearing his “Trust me I’m the Doctor Shirt” and he flashed his button up open.  
“Out and proud darlings out and proud!”  
Tom smiled at me recognising the shirt, an eye brow went north in approval.   
I didn’t know his opinion on all things nerdy – I knew he was a Shakespeare nerd like David and I but I hadn’t asked him the other important question, the question that needs to be asked or any of our friends.  
“So do you know what you’ll be wearing yet?” Tom asks. “I quite liked Chris’ leather jacket but I’d love to see the question mark return to the costume.”  
And there it was.   
The universal indicator that Tom was one of us. Of course it was a question that David couldn’t and actually wouldn’t answer at the moment (I’d asked) but still.  
“Oh he’s a keeper Juno,” Mark said putting an arm around Tom. I watched a scowl flick across David’s face and then disappear just as quickly and tried not to look self satisfied. I wondered for a moment if Kahli had seen it but she was looking at the rest of us and shaking her head - probably realising she was outnumbered. I had always got the distinct impression that she thought herself too cool for us “nerds”.   
“Oh whatever – it’s the biggest it’s the biggest show on television and my boyfriend’s the star,” she said.   
Mmm I didn’t think I could take much more of her simpering so I excused myself on the pretence of taking the empty plates back in and checking on Arabella. Tom followed close behind.  
“Are you okay?” he whispered as we entered back into the kitchen.  
“Never better – my best friends The Doctor!” I said and he laughed.  
“That a girl!”  
We were just in time to help Arabella – the food was all coming out at once and so Tom was employed setting the table while I helped get it into serving dishes. She’d decided not to set out the meal on plates but let everyone help themselves buffet style. Two big tables were set out, outside a really long one for the adults and a smaller one for the kids just a little way away. Arabella had obviously been expecting Blair’s children to be amongst the guests however both seemed to be away at a school event leaving two empty chairs at the kiddies table.   
“You can sit with us!” Leana said as she watched Tom lay out the flatware on “her” table.   
“Oh I think Juno will want to sit at the adults table!” he said looking over towards where I was laying out the food on the buffet table.  
I looked at Kahli again, her possessive hands around David’s bicep, her talons painted bright red against the black of his shirt.   
“Nah it’s all good!” I said to Tom.  
The food was amazing. The roast, the vegies, the Yorkshire puds. Tom went back twice and I rolled my eyes.  
“He’s a growing boy leave him be,” Arabella laughed as stood behind and watched Tom and her son putting vegetables on their plates again – I wasn’t sure which one she was talking about but if Tom grew any more he’d be able to play a giant in the next Harry Potter. .  
I could hear most of the conversation at the main table but with Kahli talking about her latest commercial or something I was kind of glad not to be part of it all. I loved Arabella’s kids and it was fun goofing around with them and Tom, who was an overgrown kid himself. David kept looking over at me and smiling apologetically and I must admit that when Arabella and I formulated this the other week I didn’t expect to be on the “kiddies table” but it was kind of nice and I was missing my younger sister so I relished the opportunity to spend some time with these two crazies and my newest crazy friend.  
Kahli followed David’s line of sight.  
“Oh those two could be children’s entertainers now that they’re out of RADA and unemployed,” she said motioning towards us in a rather derogatory manner.  
“Well actually,” Mark Gattiss said beside her clearing his throat for affect. “Juno is off to America in a day or two to take a role in a MAJOR American show – I’m allowed to say that aren’t I Jun??” he asked and I nodded trying not to smile at the obvious take-down by good friend   
“And Tom was telling me that he’s heading to Europe to perform Shakespeare and he has a television show and an independent movie lined up when he comes back,” he finished.  
“Oh that’s right it’s pilot season- most of those don’t get picked up but it’s great she got a start,” she said smiling condescendingly.  
“Oh well,” David said smiling across at me. “I’d hardly call a six episode arc on the West Wing a risk.”  
I smiled gratefully and Kahli scowled. Blair and Claire and our friends all fussed over mend wished both Tom and I the best. I could see Kahli about to say something probably something about my parents calling in favours so I excused myself and headed inside to go to well powder my nose as they use to say. I almost ran up the stairs to the bathroom running inside and closing the door securely, trying not to hyperventilate. I put my hands on the sink and took a very very big breath.   
I didn’t know how much more I could take of this evening, I wanted out and I wanted out now. This is a place that had always been a little haven for me particularly while my parents were all away and with Alan filming.   
I wondered if I should hightail it over to Rima’s and seek some company but I couldn’t just leave Tom here after he’d been so nice about coming.   
Splashing some water on my face I resolved to pull up my big girl pants and carry on I’d been gone about ten minutes I thought, trying to pull myself together. They’d be sending out a search party if I didn’t come down soon.  
I took a deep breath again and exited the room, ready, but not really to face the music again.  
What I didn’t count on was a welcoming committee as I made my way back towards the stairs.  
She didn’t look happy as she stalked towards me   
“You may as well go home we both know I’ve won – I’m going to be with David as he becomes the Doctor and it’s going to make my career and you’re always going to be some two-bit actress working in Mummy and Daddy’s shadow – stuck with Goldie locks and he’s never going to amount to anything!” she ground out slurring slightly – I hadn’t realised she’d been throwing back the wine. I wasn’t really watching her from my kiddie table perch and I didn’t notice it earlier. Maybe she’d had a quick couple before coming up here to face me.   
She was doing a damned good job of trying to intimidate me – right up in my face. But I wasn’t one to be easily put off, not when I had a secret weapon.  
I smiled, it’s not what she expected. She fixed me with a vicious sneer and was about to say more when a voice says something quietly in her ear.  
“I think it’s time for you to leave,” he says loud enough for me to hear too.  
And she turns slowly, almost in slow motion, shocked to find David standing behind her.  
“It was just a joke, wasn’t it Juno!?” she says smiling the most fake smile I’ve ever seen.  
“What ever you say Kahli,” I say pushing past her.  
I virtually ran down the stairs leaving David and Kahli to it. I must have looked pale because Tom said as much – offering me a glass of red wine. I gulped it down like cordial, not something I normally did. A hand reached for mine under the table and I let his fingers intertwine with mine for the reassurance.  
We could hear yelling from upstairs.  
“Should someone go and break this up?” Mark asked.  
“No I think it’s time he faced the music on this one, he’s been putting it off for a while and its only getting worse,” Arrabella said jumping in to the conversation.  
I tried not to listen to the noise filtering out the upstairs window and we all tried for a “normal” dinner party discussion. Ignoring the elephant in the room until David re-appeared 10 minutes later just as Arabella and I were serving up dessert.  
“Sorry about that everyone – Kahli um wasn’t feeling well so I’ve put her in a taxi and sent her home,” he said awkwardly.  
“Thank goodness for that,” Leana said loudly. Tom and I tried not to laugh.  
“Leana – that’s quite enough, Kahli is David’s friend don’t be rude,” Arabella said correcting her daughter.  
“Not any more,” he sighed.  
“Oh thank Christ for that,” Arabella said with a relief and without thinking. Leana tutted her finger and we all laughed.   
I spent the night at Arabella’s that night, in David’s room, in his bed.  
I know I’m a slut.  
Tom cadged a lift with David’s family, they live close to his dad’s place apparently and I was left there on my own what else was I going to do?  
I should have been strong, he’d put me through a lot with Kahli.   
But I was leaving and so was he and let’s face it he was fucking fabulous in bed.


	10. St David and the Girl Across the Table

ST DAVID and the girl across the table.  
“Come to Cardiff, you know you want to,” David purred down the phone.  
I was back in London for the first time in 10 months well other than a quick visit at Christmas to see my parents, and of course he wasn’t here. He was in Who Towers in Cardiff taking a rare moment away from filming. It was almost finished now and because of his cameo at the end of the previous year and the Christmas special (and Harry Potter) people knew who he was now and what he was about to do and the excitement was building. In about three weeks his first full series would go out to the world (nerd world and beyond) and I’d be sharing him with millions of screaming fans.  
Not that we were together, not really. It wouldn’t be fair on either of us. David was suddenly a ladies’ man; I don’t think he’d ever been a “sex symbol” before. An anorak-wearing, be speckled nerd maybe but not god’s gift to women. I didn’t have the right to take that away from him for a relationship where we got to do the wild thing for one night every six months or so. Plus I was ambitious and young and I wanted to establish myself as a separate entity out of the shadows of my family.  
Plus you couldn’t be as busy as we were and maintain a relationship. We had managed to see each other at Christmas. I’d disappeared from mum’s to head to Arabella’s two days before Christmas and ended up at David’s new flat later that night. I’d like to assume mum thought I’d stayed at Arabella’s but when I got home she suggested I use toothpaste on the marks on my shoulder before I went to my father’s for Christmas eve – a handy home tip but the second last indicator that it was time to get my own place. I could now – I’d done a film and the whole series of West Wing and with a bit of other money set aside already, I was set to be a home owner – which is what I’d been doing in the few days I was in London before I headed to Stratford to rejoin the RSC for their season of The Tempest. Miranda was a great role. I’d actually almost been named after her and had fantasized about changing my name to Miranda – so feminine and pretty. Instead my parents had lumbered me with Juno – a strong name for a strong goddess. It was part of a pattern; she’d also named my sister Gaia – another strong goddess name. Anyway Miranda for RSC was a dream job and not one I could pass up. I was headed to Shakespeare land not to Gallifrey.   
Though Gallifrey (Cardiff) had its appeals – the main one was doing his best to make me come just by talking Scottish to me. It was working.  
“Surely you have one day to spare for your old friend David?” he asked in such a way that I could see his chocolate brown puppy dog eyes without even being in the same country.   
“I’m house hunting tomorrow and going to a play in the evening and then I have a thing for dad the following day before I head north,” I sighed.  
“Pooh what play?” he asked and I laughed. He was all come to me come to me until I mentioned theatre, he was such a theatre slut.  
“Tom’s last night for Changeling here in the UK before he heads of to Europe.”  
“Oh that’s great isn’t – you’ll go see the boy but you won’t come to Cardiff to see me,” he said in a mock pout.  
“Child!”  
He laughed. “I’ll be up to film Ready Steady Cook in a few weeks and maybe you could come down to Wales for my birthday, my parents are coming.”  
“I’d love to see Helen and Sandy again!” I said. I really liked David’s parents and I knew Helen hadn’t been well recently. They’d kind of adopted me as an extra child or maybe a grand child because I need more family.  
“I’ll even pay for your room at the St David’s,” he said trying to sweeten the deal.  
“Oh so that’s where you keep all your Totty then?” I joked but he went quiet and I knew I’d hit a nerve. I knew he’d been seeing other women, we’d agreed that we weren’t in a relationship and there had been a guy in the US -nothing serious just a co-star with benefits so it wasn’t like he was cheating. Hell I knew he’d had a couple of dates with one particular actress because he’d told me. We were up front. But it kind of galled me that he would choose to put me in the same place as he had been with his other “assignations” I had kind of thought I was special. I mean I knew I couldn’t stay with him because, well he was pretty well known and so was I now and the fan girls knew where he lived. The press would have a field day if they spotted me coming out of David’s flat. Neither of us wanted that sort of publicity or pressure. And there was the little matter of my dad not knowing. Mum of course was all over it. She, Alan and Rima had given me hell on Christmas night watching the Doctor Who Christmas special.   
“Oooh nice Pyjamas does he really wear those to bed Junie?”   
“Oh yes the Sonic Screwdriver – he looks pretty handy with that doesn’t he maybe you could get him to get you one for when you’re travelling.  
“Oooh if that’s his fightin hand what does he use the other one for.”  
These were all of course whispered in my ear as we watched. They liked a good teasing. But it was about now that I decided it really was time to buy that flat and grow up. Not that I’d be home that much but still at least it would be somewhere for David and I that was away from prying eyes. But until then..............  
“Okay I’ll come!” I sighed.  
“Mmmmm I’m hoping you do,” he said cheekily and I laughed.  
“I’m having the party at St Davids and I’ll have a room there myself so I’ll get one with connecting doors.”  
This statement made me feel a bit better, I was staying there because he was staying there. But the whole idea of being another notch on his bed post had stuck in my head. I wasn’t, we were friends. Friends with benefits but I’d always felt that if we were in the same place I’d be his significant other. Now I got the unsettling feeling that I really was just one of his best friend with other activities on the side. I don’t think he intentionally made me feel like that or that he even knew he was doing it. Maybe he wasn’t doing it at all and I was just being paranoid – I was good at that.  
Even so the feeling stayed with me all the next day.   
To the point where I dismissed the two places in Crouch End that weren’t far from David even though they were both suitable and not too shabby. In the end I ended up in a suburb kind of between my mother and father in my little flat above the High Street where I’ve been happy and I still live a decade later. It was the right move but at the time I think it was more an act of defiance or survival.   
The feeling was still with me when I caught up with Tom that night. He’d been busy with a television series, some radio and a movie and now he was treading the boards. He looked amazing, he’d filled out a little and his hair was a little shorter. I went back stage afterwards with a bottle of booze and was introduced around to everyone. Our friendship picked right back up where it left off easy and comfortable. No agendas nothing to hide. I went out to dinner afterwards with him and the group and was envious of their easy camaraderie. They were already a tight team and I kind of missed that. I missed family and I missed that feeling. I couldn’t wait to get down to the RSC to be honest.  
We flirted a little but I got the impression that one of the girls had their eye on him, this became more apparent when he asked “how my man was going?” meaning David and the girl across the table who had been eyeing me off suspiciously smiled brightly, no longer seeing me as a threat. The girl’s name was Carrie I wouldn’t remember that at the time but eventually she’d become part of my circle and remains one of my closest friends. Back then she was the girl who smiled at Tom and I wasn’t sure how I felt about it. But I was already confused about David so I didn’t want to complicate things with Tom.   
“Yes he’s good,” I said nonchalantly.  
“So you’re still together?”  
I shrugged “Not really but we see each other and now I’m back in the country.....”  
I left it at that. I was off limits and if the girl across the table had her way, so would he be soon.  
It was the way it had to be I mean it’s not as if I was going to see him again anytime soon was it?


	11. Well Hello Again

I wake up in the morning with a minor hangover and a major decision. Though it’s no decision at all really. I ring the real estate agent and I put in a bid for the flat. I don’t expect to hear for a while so I head off to an audition. I’m not auditioning though, I’ve already got the part, it was a part I was born to play – Kenneth Brannagh’s daughter. Well not strictly Ken’s daughter, hard as nails Swedish Detective Wallander’s daughter. It’s dad’s big television comeback and he’s putting together the best cast he can and when I say I didn’t audition, I did sort of. Dad filmed the two of us together at Christmas running through a few scenes and the production company had been happy that I could act well enough and looked enough like Ken’s daughter to get the role. Might have been a bit embarrassing if I hadn’t passed muster.  
Today I was on-hand to test with other actors in the cast. It was dad’s way of catching up with me and involving me in the project, sharing a moment I suppose. The auditions were being held in the conference room of a less than well-known London Hotel rather than over at the BBC to keep things on the down-low. I’d been through this process a lot myself over the past few years so it was familiar and yet different. I was on the other side this time. Not that had any say on who was chosen, not really. I was just here to read the other parts and test with the actors coming through. Dad hadn’t expected it to be a long day for me – just a few hours and I’d be on my way. I didn’t have to be at Stratford until tomorrow really but I was chomping at the bit to get there and start work.   
By noon I had started to realise we’d started to underestimate this a little and by 2pm, when we finally stopped for a bite to eat, i knew I had another night in London coming up.   
We’d seen a lot of actors by the time 4pm rolled around and there were still about five to see. We were now looking at Wallander’s assistant, his off-sider. We needed someone in their late 20s to early 30s, blonde enough to pull off being Swedish, he had to be able to act and hold his own next to dad and still be a little bit of eyecandy but not in an obvious way. We had seen about four actors and one was looking okay for the role but nothing outstanding.  
And then he’d walked in.  
Dad had said the next one was a recent RADA graduate but by then I’d been too distracted, constantly checking my phone for news from the real estate agent. My first offer had been rejected and someone else had bid so i was waiting to see how my counter offer would go.  
So imagine my surprise when I looked up to see a bounce of curly blonde hair and enthusiastic blue eyes. I tried not to show it though. He hadn’t told me about his audition, I suppose he wouldn’t have expected me here. Why would he? I wondered how much the actors coming in new about the project, not that much I suspected.   
Our eyes met as he entered the room. His flickered in recognition........and something else. It wasn’t fear but I don’t know. I’d realised he was a fiercely independent guy and he didn’t want to be seen to be riding anyones coat-tails, he was going to make it on his own. I recognised a lot of myself in him, maybe that’s why we were friends.  
He was the outlier of the group, dad had something like that before he came in – the youngest to audition. I don’t think they expected much.  
He looked nervous. I had my back to my dad and the panel so I gave him a quick smile of encouragement which he didn’t acknowledge but it seemed to calm him because over the next few minutes he made that part his own. It felt just like class when we were competing against each other to be the best, the most realistic. Though he was more skilled now – his 10 months in the real world had paid dividends. So had mine.  
Dad stopped us a few minutes in.  
“Aah yes thank you Mr.......,” he looked down at his notes. “Hiddleston, could you wait outside please.”  
He had the part.  
I knew it.  
I tried not to squeal. I thanked him and gave him a non-committal nod.  
“Well gentleman,” dad said. “I think we have found our Magnus!”  
There was a lot of nodding and I was trying not to punch the air. Dad caught me out of the corner of his eye and smiled a cheeky smile. He knew. Of course he knew – RADA wasn’t that big and we’d graduated at the same time. Plus he’d seen us in a couple of productions and Tom was fairly distinctive in his looks.   
We went through the motions with the other four – it went quickly, no one came close, Tom was it and he was told as much when he came back in at the end. His eyes bugged, I don’t think he expected it. He’d obviously done the work and knew the character but he didn’t realise how good he had been. My heart melted a little. And then my phone vibrated a lot in my pocket and I excused myself.  
I was jumping up and down like a mad woman when Tom finally emerged from the audition room.  
“What? What is it?” he asked. “This can’t be about me getting the part,” he said cautiously looking around. No one was left and dad and his fellow producers were packing up.  
“I got the flat – I told you about last night!” I trilled my face threatening to split with the strength of my smile. His eyes flashed and suddenly the two of us were bouncing up and down like over energetic human versions of Tigger our arms on each other’s biceps.  
“We have to go and celebrate!!” he said breathlessly.  
“I’m thinking that you got the flat,” came a voice behind us and we flew apart like scalded cats, mainly just surprised by the intrusion but also in the back of my mind I didn’t want anyone to think Tom didn’t get this on skill alone. He deserved this break, anyone who had been in that room would know that.   
“And I think celebrating is a great idea, it would give me a chance to get to know the young man playing my assistant and the girl playing my daughter!” dad laughed.  
Tom’s eyebrow did the quirk that I’m now so familiar with.  
“Oh she didn’t tell you?” dad laughed. “And I get the impression that he, um Tom isn’t it? Tom didn’t tell you about this audition.”  
He sniggered.  
“I figured you two would at least know each other when I read his resume, well now you’re cast mates! I’m glad Juno will have a friend on the team – you two will be the youngest.”   
“Now am I going to get to see this flat of yours and then I think we should all go out to dinner my treat.”  
I looked at Tom. I didn’t want dad to get the wrong idea.  
“Um is that okay – do you want to ring your girlfriend and tell her – maybe bring her along?” I asked and dad furrowed his brow and maybe looked a little disappointed. I tried not to laugh. He was the one always telling me about the dangers of on-set romances and here he was trying to set me up............probably.  
Tom caught on fast, we were developing a shorthand for this kind of thing. He made his excuses for his girlfriend saying she was out with mates tonight and he was free for the evening and so we made plans. I was able to grab the key for my flat from the real estate agent quickly and so we went there straight away. The flat was empty and needed decoration but that made it a blank canvas – a beautiful art deco blank canvas and Tom loved it, he strode around admiring all the bits and pieces and listening to my plans. Dad was less impressed. I suppose he wanted something less, well less public. But really, the building seemed to be quite secure and I could slip away from downstairs and into annonimity pretty quickly. Like any dad he could see the negative side so I was kind of glad to have Tom along, to have his quiet enthusiasm. The nicest thing though was that Tom and dad were hitting it off. I don’t know why I found this so important. I suppose he was my friend and he was our colleague now and I wanted one big happy family. The scary thing was they had similar senses of humour and got each other’s jokes – nobody really needed that.   
We decided since we were here, we would check out one of the little restaurants not far from the flat. We settled on Indian – my favourite. The restaurant was family owned and had this warm ambiance – it felt like a waling into a family home, well almost. It was a whole family working together, which was seemed to reassure dad a bit more. The owner, our waitress for the evening, was quick to assure my father that this part of the street was very much like that, very much a family, With Neelima’s words, a good curry under his belt, Tom’s enthusiam and a couple of alcohols - dad was coming around to the whole idea faster than I expected. In fact this was the first of many curry’s we were to have there and the Singhs have become good friends (I sometimes think Neelima is a double agent, my friend but keeping a weather eye out for me for dad).  
I hadn’t enjoyed myself so much in a long while there was something nice about just being out with my dad and one of my friends that made me relaxed. I’d been go-go-go for months and I would be again tomorrow but this was just a moment to breathe out. To be with people who just got me. I don’t know when Tom had become my people but here we were. We talked about the project and acting, the universe and everything. Dad left us after dinner, my step mother had come home early from whatever she’d been at today and had sprained her wrist cooking (No I don’t know how you do that either).  
But we stayed there talking until the restaurant closed around us and Neelima gently threw us out on the street. I was seeing a Tom I’d never seen before. The real one? It’s funny we were so competitive and driven at RADA and so we’d never really talked like this. We’d shared all the same friends but I’d pegged him a player and he’d found me prickly. It wasn’t until the pressure was off a little that either of us had let our guard down and now I realising while he was driven to succeed, the nice guy thing wasn’t an act. We kept talking all the way to the Tube and he insisted on seeing me home to my mother’s place even though it was four stops on from his own. But I didn’t mind, I was enjoying his company, enjoying chatting about life, the universe and everything. The one elephant in the room was David, well David and Carrie – love lives were off the table well specific love lives. It seemed to be an unwritten law – one I was fine with, I didn’t want to talk about or think about David for an evening. He was in my head too often and in my arms too little. I didn’t know what David was and I doubt Tom knew what he was doing with Carrie yet. But we could discuss love in a wider sense – as part of our lives and though we both decided while we wanted spouses and families it was a long way off for us and careers came first. We both wanted to establish ourselves and at 25 that was fair enough, we had a lot to prove to ourselves, to our families and to the world. It was so nice that he got that.  
Finally he walked me to my door, well my mother’s door. It was close to midnight but the lights were still on and so invited him in. In to meet the formidable Emma Thompson and surprisingly he didn’t flinch.   
My mother was running lines with my stepfather, glass of wine in her hand, leant against the counter. I can’t remember the role she was rehearsing but she was in full flight, awesome in her power. He should have been intimidated, god I was when she was like that. But he watched in awe but not overawed and maybe I was lucky she was distracted by the task at hand and couldn’t find ways to embarrass me in front of him, but she welcomed him and soon we were all caught up in the scene, matching glasses of red in our hands, learning the scene with her. Our own little midnight acting ensemble.   
It was 2am before we knew it and my six year old sister would be up at 6am without fail, you could set your alarm by her. She would also be full of life. Unlike my mother and I Gaia was a morning person. She was a morning person on steroids. My parents needed to go to bed and I suppose I did too I had to be in Stratford tomorrow evening. I’d be exhausted if I didn’t go to bed now.  
Tom should go home. But I didn’t want him to. I probably wouldn’t see him for months now, until our table reads and then location in Sweden. I liked his company, it was easy and fun and without complication and..............There was no and. We were both off the market in an on-the-market kind of way.  
Mum offered him the spareroom but he declined politely – errands to run in the morning, people to see..........I wondered briefly if one of these people were Carrie.   
Instead Greg rang and paid for a taxi home for him. He tried to resist but my parents stood firm, he was still here because of them so it was only right. Then they went to bed and left us to say our goodbyes.  
We stood on the step in front of my house waiting for the cab at 2.15am in the morning. It was cold but I wasn’t feeling it – an evening of wine and good company had warmed me and made me feel human again and we still had plenty to talk about in fact we were still talking when the taxi arrived. But a quick hug and a promise to keep in touch and he was gone.  
I watched the car completely disappear down the street before I finally went to bed.


	12. A Doctor In the House

A Doctor in the house   
DAVID Tennant is sexy on the phone but by god he’s even more so in person.  
For the past two weeks I’ve been working my arse off for the Royal Shakespeare Company here in Stratford, trying to bed down Miranda to Patrick Stewart’s Prospero. We’ve been putting in long hours, I’ve even written an essay on her motivation. If anyone tries to tell you that acting is just standing on a stage – don’t believe them. I’m exhausted. Beyond exhausted. I’ve had very little time to relax and even less time to check in with my friends and family. Of course they’re all busy too and not in the between gigs “may I take your order?” way either. Tom is in Europe on tour, Liz is filming again, as are my mother, Andrea and my godfather.   
And David. David has just a few weeks left on his first series of Doctor Who and he’s beyond busy and stressed but despite long long days you get the impression he’s having the time of his life and despite his hours, he’s the one I hear most from.   
You see the nice thing is that this is a boy who knows RSC better than most.   
Better than me.   
He knows how our director Greg works and his mindset.   
And so he knows when to call – usually stolen moments between scenes or early in the morning when he’s on-set and I’m up and running lines before rehearsals (and when I say running I mean – running, I love to run while I learn it helps it sink in for me). David’s been calling a lot – even more than the solicitor handling the settlement on my apartment to be honest, in fact other than our director and immediate cast, he’s the person I hear most from. But it’s nice to be able to talk to him – David that is - sometimes it’s not until 2am in the morning but it’s nice to hear his voice. I get the feeling that there is something going on with him. I know he needs a friend but I’m not sure why as yet so I take his calls no matter what the time.   
I wish I could be with him and not because I’m toey. Well not JUST because I’m toey.  
And it seems he wants to see me too because here he is – impossible hair, tight jeans, favourite T shirt and all but he’s not here to see me and I didn’t know he was coming. I try not to feel a pang of jealous or something at this. I know why he’s hear and if I’d thought about it, it’s not such a surprise. I just feel left out that there was no warning.  
He has a rare two days off and he’s travelled north to talk business. It’s not really surprising that his down-time would be spent talking work, he’s a work-a-holic, always an eye on the next job, not taking opportunities for granted. He’s driven – one of the things I like about him – and now it’s all paying off.  
It’s not hard to work out why he’s here and who he’s here to see. Just a few days ago his episode of the ancestry program Who Do You Think You Are hit the BBC and there he was holding a skull, Hamlet style. A lot of us know David and we’d watched it together at the local pub. We’d all said it at once – “well someone wants to play Hamlet”. A few hours later our director was on the phone to Wales and now four days later here he was, in that same pub having meetings with the RSC.   
I’m at a table across the bar trying not to stare at him, trying to eat my supper and have a quick drink with other members of the company and get home to bed. But that’s difficult when my best friend is sitting right there, deep in conversation with my boss.  
One of the younger guys in the cast whispers “that looks like David Tennant” and I realise I’m staring, giving myself away. I suddenly find my food very interesting.   
He looks amazing, tired but amazing. A sight for sore eyes as they say in the classics.   
But it’s look but not touch for me this time, I wonder if he’ll acknowledge me, talk to me, seek me out? Surely he will? Won’t he?  
I’m not part of these discussions these are for the hierarchy, for Greg and for my co-star. To be honest I’m shocked to see him.   
I stay for an hour trying not to watch but in the end my long days catch up with me, I want to be here, I want to drink him in but being a few metres away after months apart is taking it’s toll and I’m fading fast, I have to be up again early in the morning again. We’re three quarters through our preparation work and working at full pelt to get the production together.  
I take one more look over my shoulder, trying not to be too obvious about it and failing miserably, and then I head back to where I’m staying. My phone rings an hour later. It’s just as well because for some reason I’m not sleeping, for some reason the moment I entered my room in the house I’m sharing with two of my cast-mates that overwhelming need to sleep disappeared and I’m left staring at the ceiling and wondering. I know the reason though, if I’m honest with myself, he was beautiful, just out of reach and I’m wet just thinking about it. I resist the urge though, hoping for someone to scratch the itch for me.  
“So I rushed up here so fast I forgot to book a room, know anywhere I could stay?” comes a familiar voice down the line.   
“Who is this?” I counter cooly.   
“I’m the Doctor, I’m from Gallifrey – okay Cardiff and I’ve come to take you away in my Tardis!” he says sexily. Okay they aren’t words you usually associate with foreplay but hey I’m a nerd and that was a turn on. I do the school girl giggle and answer with a predictable..........“I bet you say that to all the girls.”  
“No I tell them I’m the Master,” he almost growls back and I’m kind of forgiving him for not ringing me now. I was uncontactable for most of the day anyway.   
“I’ve heard that too, though the big question is have you brought your sonic screw....................driver with you?” I say huskily, trying to evoke great screen goddess of the forties but ending up probably sounding more like a have a sore throat.  
To his credit he doesn’t offer me a lozenge and offer to rub my chest (although?). Instead he laughs, “well you’ll have to invite me in to find out.”  
We formulated a plan to get him into the house without alerting my flatmates, but it proves unnecessary – I scout around and they seem to have gone out. Unlike me they weren’t part of the main core cast so, the pressure wasn’t really on, so they were both back out to another pub (not frequented by the main bosses of the RSC).  
We had the beautiful old three-storey house to ourselves.   
Not that we were going to use much of it to be honest, just one room really.   
The dwelling was stretched out over three stories including an attic room at the top of the house. I had been the one to find the place and so I’d chosen the attic for myself. It was beautiful, warm and fairly isolated from the rest of the house, allowing me privacy to practice for the challenge I had ahead of me.   
The room had nook area where a desk nestled under a dormer window as well as a queen-sized bed, ensuite, lounge to stretch out on and a large television (not that I ever used that). The desk was my favourite place to be, it had my computer and offered a window to the outside world both virtually and really.   
And here was David in my new, if temporary world.  
We greeted each other fairly chastely, like friends because, well we are and after ascertaining that he wasn’t hungry we by-passed the rest of the house, grabbed a couple of glasses for the bottle of scotch he’d bought and headed up to my room.  
“I should be angry with you for not telling me you were coming,” I sighed as he put down his gear and I put the glasses on the small table next to my bed. He didn’t say a word, he’d complimented the rest of the house but nothing for this room.   
The sloping roof made it hard for him to stand up but it didn’t stop him from pushing me against the nearest wall and kissing me ferally. I didn’t know he had it in him. Not that I was complaining.  
“You’re not though are you?” he asked seductively, running those long fingers of his right hand through my hair. Angry?   
I’m hardly conscious now, the blood is flowing away from my brain rapidly.   
“Angry is not the word I’d use,” I say in a low voice. I’m not sure what word I’d use to be honest because I can’t think straight anymore as his body pushes mine against the wall and his other hand is rapidly mapping down my body.  
I shake my head instead.  
“You know how much I want to play Hamlet.”  
“It all happened so fast, Greg rang and this window opened up and..........”  
His tongue is now in my mouth and my hands are uselessly around his neck pulling him closer, if that were physically possible.   
Eventually the kiss ends and I whimper a little like the love-sick school girl I seem to have become.   
My jeans are undoing themselves, clever things and my long hair is suddenly down and framing my face.  
“So I thought I’d kill two birds with one stone,” he whispers on my skin as my jeans head south and I’m finally alive enough to rid him of his shirt.  
“If you don’t mind?” he asked.  
Mind? I’m out of my mind now, out of my body too – I’m floating on a sea of lust and I don’t think I’ve wanted anything more in my life.  
“No I’m not angry though if you keep talking and stop doing what you’re doing I might be,” I groan as I fumble for his jeans.   
Anyone would think I hadn’t seen a man before but working so hard and putting all that energy and passion into a project makes me horny and I’ve had no outlet for my frustrations other than taking things into my own hands for the past four months. And my fingers are no substitution for his I can tell you.  
And so here he is suddenly in my room with his hands all over my body and my self control has gone flying out the dormer window like unsecured script pages in the breeze.   
My underwear has gone south and I step out of it as he shucks his shoes, socks and jeans.   
My shirt is gone and he pushes my hand away to fumble with my bra.   
I smack his hand and undo it myself. He’s hopeless at it – last time he managed to break the clip with his teeth trying to be sexy – I thought he was going to choke.– he still owes me for a new piece of Victoria’s Secret.   
His growl is feral as he scoops me up (narrowly missing knocking me out on a beam) and chucks me on the bed. For a man that looks like a twig he’s surprisingly sturdy and stronger than he looks. He’s as naked as me too now suddenly and crawling up the bed, up my body like he’s a man on a mission.  
“Ohh doctor is that a sonic in your pocket or are you just happy to see me and can you put it on the red setting?” I say huskily as his face reaches mine and he covers my whole body with his.  
“Mmm I told you to call me MASTER beautiful lady,” he says deep and slow as he kicks my legs apart.   
“Master,” I growl and his brown eyes flash- they’ll be precious little foreplay now and I don’t need it as I wrap my legs around him and pull him to the vortex of my Tardis like a heat seeking missile.   
It’s hard, fast and dirty and I have to use all my willpower not to scratch and mark the crap out of him and he’s the same.   
And although opening night is still a few weeks away we both know Virginal Miranda shouldn’t really look like she’s just had a Scotsman between her legs – she needs to keep her knees together for at least the first half of the play.   
Up until David the Doctor has been pretty A sexual (I don’t think they could do that to him if they tried). In my bed tonight he’s pure sex but i’m sure there would be questions asked if I left my marks on him. Though it’s tempting.   
It’s over quickly, though not in an unsatisfactory manner (he doesn’t even try to hold back and I’m kicking him on with my heels so fast I think he realises I don’t want him to anyway).  
We lay there in the afterglow, sweaty, breathless...............and just warming up.  
Post coitaly I’m laying on my side with his arm around me, lazily playing with the smattering of hair on his chest.  
“So your audition worked? Are you going to play the great Dane?” I said lazily.  
He shook his head. “It really wasn’t an audition – I just saw the skull and did it before I even thought about it!”   
I laughed.  
“But it worked?”  
“Well yes it worked,” he sighed slightly exasperated.”We think we’ll all be able to do it in a year or twos time.”  
I loved tease him.  
“So will there be a role for a Shakespearian trained actress – blonde mid to late 20s in this Doran-Stewart-Tennant production?” I asked as I rolled into him a little more.  
“Oooh so first you’re teasing me and now you’re asking for a job? Mmmm you want a little Ophelia,” he giggled.  
“Isn’t that my line,” I say slowly. It doesn’t matter because I’m more interested in having a bit of a feel of him.  
I bring him undone the second time with the aid of a bit of hand and mouth and he reciprocates and suddenly that tired feeling is seeping back into my bones. He’s feeling the effects of long hours on set too and he’s drifting.   
“I have to be up and out to rehearsals at 7am in the morning so I should get some sleep or I’ll be fucked in the morning,” I sighed still coming down from another moment of bliss.  
“Mmmm but if you stay awake you’ll be fucked as well,” he half growled, half yawned.  
“So I’m not the only one that gets horny from working long hours,” I laugh.  
He sighs.  
“It’s a shame you can’t come down to Cardiff for the next few weeks and keep me company.”  
“Yeah because that’s what you want me playing house at your flat.”  
He kissed my head sleepily.  
“You know that wouldn’t be half bad,” he says as I feel him drifting off to sleep.  
My eyes close and I follow him.   
Minutes later, or so it seems, the alarm is sounding and I’m heading groggily to the shower. I’ve had little more than three hours sleep, I’m aching after using muscles that haven’t had a workout in a while and I have a big days work with Patrick Stewart but somehow I’m relaxed. It’s amazing what a good roll in the hay will do with a long and gorgeous Scotsman will do for a girl.   
The man in question is still sleeping.   
His long eyelashes are pulled down over those brown eyes, dusting his lightly freckled face. He looks like an adorable child not a man in his mid thirties and I wonder if this is what his babies will look like.  
It take long and soon I’m dressed and ready to leave. I kiss him gently on the forehead not being able to resist and he stirs.  
“Can’t you stay?” he asks groggily more aware of his surroundings than I would be in the same situation.  
“I’m sorry I have a morning with Captain Picard,” I whisper.  
“Make it so Number One,” he mumbles. “Thank you number 10!” I laugh quietly. “If you leave it until after 9am then the others will be off to their rehearsals and no one will see you leave I say,” kissing him again. We don’t need the complications of other people knowing we’re sleeping together.  
“Mmm okay,” he says snuggling back in under the duvet. For a second I want to join him but this is a huge break for me, I’m working with Patrick Stewart – I’m one of the stars of an RSC production at just short of 26. Me – not my mother or father or aunt or grandmother. .   
I get to the rehearsal space before Greg or Patrick and run through a few lines.   
Ten minutes later they both arrive and we are in full swing.  
It’s hard work and we look at different ways of playing the scene trying them out, working with each other until we are all happy with this critical part of the play.   
Both of the men I’m working with are at the top of their game but they listen to me and it’s exhilarating. I’m not at the kiddy table any more, I’m playing with the big boys and it’s thrilling, thrilling to work with two people who are that good at what they do.  
Before I know it, it’s 10am and we decide on a break. I look up and see David standing at the back of the hall with a coffee and he’s clapping and yelling bravo and I flush red, letting the other’s go ahead. He’s obviously dropping in for one more meeting before heading back to Cardiff and so I head to the ladies room and leave them to it.  
When I return they’re all chatting and laughing and drinking the tea he brought, eating the French fancies he’d inevitably been clutching.  
I kind of feel like I’m the young one again and I hover at the edge of the rehearsal space, trying to disappear.  
“Come join us,” a voice booms.I smile answering Patrick’s call to walk across and stand with these three men. I’m in awe of all of them, even the one that had his face between legs a few hours ago, the one that was telling me turn his screw driver on....................  
“David have you met our young Juno – you know she would be perfect for our project!” he smiles but Greg answers first explaining we are old friends.  
“Perfect, Perfect – how do you feel about going mad and drowning yourself in a stream?” Patrick laughs.  
“I don’t think my performance is that bad!” I giggle and so do the others. I’m starting to relax and we talk about the project and when it’s likely to happen. It’s two years away and not locked in but now there feels like every chance it will happen.  
“It could be a family affair by then,” David whispers in my ear smiling as he hands me the coffee he brought in. I look at him quizzically wondering what he means – are they looking to bring my mother in? My father? Is he hinting at something else. My mind freezes. I’m not thinking ahead – is he? My focus is this job and the next, two years is a long way away.   
“You didn’t get a chance to eat this morning before you left and I know you’re not fully functional until you have one of these under your belt,” he says.   
Coupled with what he’s just said knowing coffee drinking habits and admitting these two great men that we were together this morning feels all too much and kind of out of place in this setting. It feels like an invasion of our privacy. Sure we’re friends so we’re supposed to know what each other drinks but this feels over familiar like he’s letting out a secret. I feel a little uneasy. This lovers thing is still fairly new and sporadic and so is my burgeoning career, I’m still feeling my way in life.   
We talk some more and it goes back to being easy and jovial and now I can’t wait to work with these guys and discuss “count-ry matters” with Hamlet – if my schedule allows.   
All too soon it’s back to work time and David’s turn to leave. I go to say good bye and head back to the stage area, I’m eager to get this scene working; eager to keep learning what these two men have to teach me. RADA feels like nursery school compared to this. Very few get this.   
David takes my hand.   
The other’s say their goodbyes and move away and he looks at me his eyes sparkling and kisses me goodbye. Not the chaste kiss that I thought I’d get, no this is a thorough tongue-lashing.  
I’m breathless when we disengage.   
“See you in Cardiff darling,” he says waving goodbye to the others and he leaves and I feel two sets of eyes upon me.  
Eyebrows are cocked and knowing looks pass between the two.  
“Well I must say that’s a smart career move on his part,” I hear Greg say to Patrick.  
And I wonder what it means for me.


	13. On the Road

I don’t have time to stew over the David situation (though it’s in the back of my mind, ready to leap forward the moment I have a minute).  
We are both so busy that there are only a handful of conversations about work mainly and of course a few stress relieving chats before I’m on the road to Cardiff for David’s birthday. This is the first time I’ve really had time to myself, time to think and take in just what is happening in my life.   
And of course my phone rings.   
I check the caller ID and it’s Tom. He’s been quiet for a week or two – though we’ve emailed and I’ve been keeping up with his blog and we tweet. His blog is funny and revealing and I love the way he writes. I think, like me, there is a frustrated writer or journalist in there somewhere. Writing is something I want to do in the future although of course my mother has won an Oscar for screenwriting so I’d still have a shadow over me even if I switched.   
I put the phone on speaker in my Corolla and I smile as I answer him, imagining his big blue eyes sparkling and those blonde Gene Wilder curls bobbing as he talks.  
“Hey stranger!”  
“Haven’t got you at a bad time? It sounds like you’re going through a tunnel,” he says – he sounds both a long way away and right here in the car and I kind of miss him. We’ve become good friends maybe even better than before. We both talk with our hands, with our writing, so we’ve had some great email chats since he’s been away. We don’t speak on the phone often so this is a rare treat. Our relationship is at a nice place because there’s no expectation of anything more. I’ve never had a brother but I could imagine this is what it might feel like.  
“I’m in the car heading to Cardiff for a day or two!” I say into thin air.   
“Oooooh Juno’s on a booty call!” he chants and I roll my eyes.  
“No it’s David’s birthday, there’s a big party. His parents are coming from Scotland.”  
“So no chance to see the doctor’s sonic then!”  
“I didn’t say that!” I laugh and add “How’s Carey?” before he can make anymore cheeky remarks.  
“Gone home – she’s got a role in London so we won’t see each other for a while,” he says with a sigh.  
“Ah okay!”   
“What does “ah okay” mean?”  
“Amsterdam!”   
I hear him laugh though he sounds slightly horrified. “Oh god I forgot you’re reading my blog.”  
“So it happened?” I ask, giggling. There had been a particularly salacious piece on his blog about ladies of the night and bananas that I’d be dying to tease him about..  
“Names were changed to protect the innocent!” he says warily.  
“You know your sisters are probably reading too.”  
I hear him gasp and then I hear the sound of a keyboard and I can’t help myself – I have to laugh. I probably look weird to the motorists flashing past me if they’re bothering to look. We talk some more about our up coming projects and particularly about Wallander and something else we’ve both auditioned for that we can’t talk about with anyone else and I briefly wonder how much this is costing him. He doesn’t seem to mind though. He sounds like he’s having a ball, although maybe a little lonely, so I let him chat. it’s actually nice to have the company even if he isn’t really here. I kind of wish he was though.   
“Junie are you okay?” he says suddenly, voice full of concern.   
“You’ve gone very quiet.”  
I sigh. Caught in my own thoughts again.   
“Just listening to your stories and concentrating on the road.”  
“No it’s more than that – even your emails have seemed a bit pre-occupied.”   
“Just so much happening that’s all,” I say.  
“Junie whats wrong?”  
Wow when did he get so perceptive?  
I have two days off and then it’s back for two days and straight into previews. It’s sold out and there is very real talk that it’s transferring to London. That will take me right up until I start table reads and filming with dad and Tom. Dad expects that we’ll film two series back-to-back which will take up several months. It is a little daunting but it’s also thrilling. And then I’m also in with a big chance at a couple of movies in the New Year, another Shakespeare and possibly Hamlet over the next two years. My dance card is filling up and I’m on the edge of something. I feel like my life is just starting, really starting.  
And I’m a home owner now. I’ve signed the lease on my first flat, my first place entirely on my own and it’s exciting and thrilling and new and I can’t wait.   
With all this I feel like I’m finally growing up, coming into my own, moving out of my comfort zone and becoming an adult, self sufficient and on my way to being out from behind the long shadows of my parents and my extended family.  
And then there’s David.  
The man I’ve had a crush on forever.  
“I think David wants to settle down, I mean maybe, I think he’s hinting I don’t know, I’m probably reading it wrongly,” I stumble.  
“Holy shit Juno. Wow!” he says sounding shocked – we’ve talked about five and 10 year plans – where we want to be, what we want to do. Serious relationships aren’t really on the agenda – if they happen, they happen and I appear to have one happening.   
“How do you feel about that?”  
I sigh. “I don’t know, scared. I mean it’s David I’m pretty sure I love him but he’s the docto, he’s about to be the most famous and popular actor in Britain, like my parents. I don’t know. I’m not ready I mean I think he’s the one but..........”  
Tom goes quiet, he must be thinking, I imagine him running his fingers through his curls. Or maybe he’s dropped out. He’s on a train, travelling to the next venue, he’s dropped out just when I need him most.  
“You have to tell him Juno,” he says finally.  
I think I’d rather he dropped out.  
“Maybe,” I say quietly.  
“Juno!”  
“I’m probably reading it all wrong!”  
“Junie.”  
I hear some garbled announcement in the background, it’s in a foreign language I can’t tell you which one.   
“Oh god! This is our stop,” he says sighing.  
“I’m sorry – ring me okay? In a day or two or email me!”  
I tell him I will and he signs off leaving me alone with my thoughts. Never ever ever a good thing.


	14. The Doctor in the Tardis with Juno

The Doctor in the Tardis with Juno Branagh  
I arrived in Cardiff just before lunch on the Friday afternoon and checked into St David’s under an assumed name – Miranda Prosper – my room adjoins William Hamnet. The room is a single but I have a key to the next suite and it’s king-sized bed and spa bath and already I’m making afternoon plans for a little champagne, chocolate and soak in the spa. There’s is a big basket of goodies on the table in my room with a card from William – it’s my birthday on Monday and he’s spoiling me, I’m not going to complain.   
But before my bags even hit the ground my phone rings and it’s the man himself.   
He’s still on set and is sending a car for me in 10 minutes. I really would have loved a rest, the party isn’t until tomorrow night and so I had time to catch up on a bit of sleep and pampering. But my friend William Hamnet is eager to see me and now he’s rung I’m eager to be on-set. I haven’t seen David for two weeks but I’ve never seen the Tardis up-close and my geek girl senses are tingling.  
They are finishing early tonight for a change but filming is still underway. And there he is, he’s hard to miss because he’s not in his regular costume. No David Tennant is wearing a spacesuit. When the hell did orange become sexy?   
The easy answer is when Mr Tenninch put it on.  
I’m ushered to chairs well back away from the action but still with a good view and I sit in awe watching next to a tall blonde man with blue eyes and short cropped curls. If he was impossibly skinny and just a touch cuter he could be Tom but instead he’s Lawrence Fox – I’ve met him before, we’re both actor’s brats so we mingle and meet at function. We also have something else other than an acting pedigree in common, the woman David is currently swirling around is Lawrence’s girlfriend Billie – David’s co-star for this season but not for next. This is Billie’s last scene- though it will appear in the third last episode apparently according to one of the crew who directed me to my seat and gave me a quick run-down on what I was seeing.   
“If he kisses her I will have to deck him,” Lawrence giggles, thrusting out his hand to me, “nice to see you again Juno – David said I might get a little company this afternoon!”  
“Oh did he?” I say with an eyebrow lift.   
“Oh god you two have been friends too long, you have his eyebrow down pat,” he says laughing and shaking his head.  
“I’ll have you know I had that first!” I giggle back. We’re both third generation in this game and yet someone has to come over and quieten us down. We look admonished like naughty school children and go back to watching the action, quietly, in awe of our partners and what they are getting to do.   
It’s a brilliant scene “Stuff of Legends” to be exact and I see real tears in his eyes as he swirls her round. For a moment I think that he is actually going to kiss her and I take a sly sideways glance towards Lawrence but he has a tear too as he watches Billie’s last scene. It’s hard not to be emotional and I haven’t even seen any of their filming before today. The crew rush them and there are flowers and a cake is rolled in. Lawrence and I watch from a distant, spectators not participants, not wanting to get in the way. I haven’t been a regular cast member in a television show yet but filming and spending so much time together forges you into a family, makes you all close. Comrades in arms! And Lawrence and I are in-laws, interlopers, though he at least has been in a few scenes (albeit as a cyberman encased in silver and bad attitude).   
We watch as the speeches start and Billie, David, producer Phil and showrunner Russell T Davies are all in tears. Lawrence hands me a tissue which is when I realise I’m crying too. I thank him but before we can say anymore Billie motions for Lawrence to come over and he grabs my hand and drags me over too. Lawrence stands beside his lady while she is celebrated by first David and then Phil and finally Russ. Sometime during Phil’s speech David comes to stand beside me and by the time we get to RTD’s his fingers have found mine and are intertwined. I don’t know how it happened but it feels natural and yet still a little weird and unfamiliar to be so blatantly holding hands surrounded by so many people. We are, however towards the back and so most people wouldn’t have noticed to be honest.  
The speeches over, David’s intentions turn to thoughts of cake. It’s a big one and I know it will be the start of a “cake” weekend and it’s scaring me.My costume is tight and I get the feeling I’m going to need a lot of exercise to still be able to fit into it after Cardiff. I say as much to David as we approach the main guys. And his eyebrow shoots up in mischief.  
“Now that can be arranged!” he says saucily, bringing my hand up to his lips and quirking those brows for all they are worth. I blush, in fact with David in orange and me glowing red, we start to resemble a traffic light. I look around the room to see if anyone has noticed and I feel eyes upon me, boring into me. Young female crew members (and some of the boys) looking at me daggers like I have their man and they aren’t happy with it. I’m not secure enough in myself to smile back and squeeze his hand possessively. Right now I want to run but since we’re heading to the centre of the set and my hand is still firmly attached to David’s, I’m going nowhere. Instead I look for a friendly face and in one of those miracles of modern science, I find one.  
Jeanie, who I know from visiting David on the set of Blackpool and a few boozey nights at David’s comes towards me.  
“Juno!” she says warmly. “Amazing to see you babe.” I’ve always had the feeling that she has a thing for David but, rather than see me as a threat, she’s like me – a friend of his and so she has his best interest at heart and not self interest. I hug her, which comes with the added bonus of David letting go my hand and then we chat allowing David to go off and get cake without me.  
“Thank you!” I whisper after he leaves.  
“No problems – he’s a bit of a catch around here,” she whispers conspiratorial. “And when the actress that was trying to get her hooks into him suddenly seemed off the list they all thought they were in with a chance. It’s a bit of a shock I think to see his real girlfriend!” she giggles and I must look at her with wide eyes.  
“We’re just friends,” I stammer. “We’ve known each other forever, I.”  
She laughs and hugs me close. “I’ve known from the moment we met how you feel about him just as you know how I feel about him and I’ve known from the moment he got on set that things were starting to change between you.”  
I must have looked like a deer in the headlights because she squeezed me tight.  
“You’re a lucky bitch!” she giggled and as I watched him interacting with his cast and crew I figured she was pretty right.  
“It’s all a bit overwhelming,” I sighed.  
“If you ever need a friend you know where I am!” she said seriously and I thanked her, feeling like I needed all the friends I could get at the moment. The universe must have heard me because I turned to find David and Russell standing behind me.  
“Oooh hello you!” he said bending in and kissing Jeanie on the cheek before introducing me to his boss. Russell was over the top and lovely and charming and suddenly I didn’t feel such an outsider. We talked about the show and the fandom and me maybe playing a role next year. I was a fellow nerd and Jeanie was rolling her eyes – more so when Phil came and joined in the conversation.   
“Oh god they’re everywhere,” she said shaking her head.  
Phil and Russell made me feel part of the team as we shared Who stories and favourite Doctors and all those things that nerds do when they’re hunting in packs. I didn’t feel left out when David went off to change. By the time he returned sans Spacesuit (mmm now that might have been fun at home!) Phil was regaling both Russell and I with stories of his early sexual awakenings thanks to Turlough, the fifth doctor’s companion. I’m sure they both had much more important things to do other than talk to me but they were sweet and protective like friendly older brothers or in the case of Russell who is impossibly tall, an over enthusiastic teddy bear.   
“Okay, okay break it up you three, you’ll see each other tomorrow night – Junie and I have an early dinner with my parents now!” David laughed. I did the eyebrow quirk at him and Phil cracked up “Oh god you two!”  
“Juno! Lovely to meet you, come back and play with us sometime!” Russell said in his lovely Welsh lilt as he lent in to kiss my cheek. “David go take the nice girl for some dinner and I’ll see you both tomorrow night!”  
Phil hugged me too. “I should hate you but you’re one of us so I can’t!” Phil whispered in my ear giggling as he said it.  
“I know – Jeanie already said I was a lucky bitch!” I whispered back. He laughed wholeheartedly while David stood looking at us wondering what the hell was going on. He really didn’t realise the affect he had on women or men for that matter and it probably made him even more endearing.  
“I’ll tell you later David!” I giggled as Phil looked horrified. “No you won’t!” he said as I made the key and lock sign near my mouth. Phil smiled in relief while David still stood their shaking his head and trying to work out what was going on.  
Goodbyes said (and Lawrence and Billie nowhere to be seen) we headed out to the car with David remarking at how quickly I’d made friends. I laughed not letting on how uncomfortable I’d felt until I’d been rescued. We chatted about the scenes and the show and he apologised about spring dinner with his family on me. I didn’t mind – not really, I really liked David’s parents Helen and Sandy and his sister Karen, who had made the trip with them. They were such a loving close tight-knit group and it was nice to be a part of if even if I was just on the edge.  
I was starting to feel a little more comfortable in the girlfriend role, though I still had an unease in the back of my mind. I wanted this right? I wanted a relationship with David? He was one of my best friends, an amazing man, talented and perfect in an imperfect way. I just couldn’t shake the feeling that we were moving faster than I wanted and that I was part of something bigger than me, than us.


	15. A Sense of Self

OUR next stop is not our hotel but a small family restaurant, old-fashioned and quaint. It’s obviously run by an Italian family and reminds me of Neelima’s Indian Kitchen below my new flat in Primrose Hill, in feel – though not in decor. Oh no the decor is traditionally and kitschly Italian – red gingham tablecloths, Tuscan frieze on the wall, bottles as candle holders and white crockery. The restaurant is small and homely and has that wonderful aroma of garlic and tomatoes, home-cooked by the Mama of the house that you get in all the best and unpretentious.  
I wonder if this is a little oasis that David has found in the city that is currently his home and when “Joe” an elderly Italian man, greets him like a long-lost son I realise that I’m right. He guides us to the back of the small establishment and there waiting for us are members of David’s family, his older sister Karen and his mother and father Helen and Sandy McDonald. They stand as we approach and hug both of us like long-lost family – which I suppose in David’s case is true. What floors me though, what always floors me when I’m with the McDonald’s is that they treat me in just the same way. They are warm and familiar and want to know everything that is happening with me in the first few minutes of meeting.   
After feeling so swept away by the overwhelming being, animal, machine that is “David Tennant – Actor,” it is nice to return to what I know, to who we really are. His family, this place, it all feels real not reel. We hug and chat and although they aren’t overly-sentimental but more on the practical side of life, they are loving and interested in me. I’m not disappearing into David with them. Sandy want to know about my new flat, when I’m moving in, where it is, what needs doing. He offers to come and help if I need it – stuff that David hasn’t asked not that he would know how to help (I’ve seen him try the home handyman thing – it isn’t pretty, funny, but not pretty). Helen wants to know how far I am from my parents, how mum is, my sister, my dads...........and Karen asks about The Tempest and how my work is going. David feigns hurt and jealousy but I can tell he’s enjoying just being part of the group, not the centre for a short while. He asks them all questions about this and that and it’s nice to be caught up in the general chit chat. Helen looks pale and has to stop to cough a few times. She explained she had a bit of a turn a few weeks ago but is fine. At this stage I don’t know, don’t know that “her little turn” was a heart attack that has left her week and shortened her life more than anyone of us at the table knows that night. No instead we enjoy this evening. We enjoy pasta and a little red wine but before we can order deserts (I’m itching to try their tiramisu) the lights flash and Joe and his wife carry out a cake.  
It’s not a beautiful store bought creation like this afternoon, but a lovingly made sponge, covered in raspberries and it’s not for David but me. Made by Helen and Sandy and brought down, probably in old worn much-used Tupperware, to mark my birthday, so that I don’t get lost in the glitz and glamour of the big swanky party for David tomorrow night.  
The last home-made birthday cake I had was two years ago when my step-dad and Gaia, my then four year old sister, whipped up a very chocolate creation smothered in sweeties (though probably not as many as Greg had thought would make it). This meant just as much. Tears slipped from my eyes and I was hugged, by Helen who said of course they wouldn’t forget me and whispered quietly in my ear that whatever the future brought for David and I, I would always be part of their family and welcome in their home at any time. In the danger of lurching from being “Emma Thompson or Kenneth Brannagh’s daughter” to David Tennant’s girlfriend, this was a little life raft to hang on to. These people liked and respected me for the real me and were interested in me.  
It was a nice moment in what was a hectic and full on weekend that was all festival of the Tennant.   
We made our way to the hotel where we were all staying and hugged good night in that warm way that families do and I felt all warm and flushed and not just because of the cheap and cheerful Italian wine.  
We made love that night, David and I. It had probably been sex before – lustful and a little dirty and fun. This has been slow and languid, a little like the first time but with less urgency. I mapped his body with my hands, memorised his freckles and contours and he did the same until we were both hazy and ready and then he moved slowly, gently (but not too gently) steady, loving –a slow burn, a slow build up and I tipped over the edge and he followed me breathlessly, putting more effort in being restrained than he would have in being hard and fast and dirty.  
I look up from my haze and realise it’s the next day and it’s his birthday.  
I press my lips to his and wish him happy birthday, his hands make lazy trails down my back in a gentle thank you.   
“Mmmm maybe we should take off up the coast when you finish your run in The Tempest – just you and I,” he sighs contently.  
“In the Skoda?” I laughed slow and lanquidly.  
“What’s wrong with my Skoda?” he looks hurt and I can’t work out whether he’s acting or not.  
“Would it even make it out of Cardiff?”   
“Rude!” he says and he tickles me until I giggle and it starts to turn from fun back to something a little more adult and a lot more intense than our beautiful reunion.   
“If you are going to do a journey like that you need to do it in something classic – like a jag – I’d love a lovely old navy blue or racing green Jag one day!” I say as he kisses me hotly.  
“Hardly a family car darling!”  
“Mmmm no something sexy?” I moan.  
“I’ll give you something sexy Juno Brannagh!”   
And he does – twice more – this time it’s back to the familiar full-on body not heart stuff, pleasure seeking not that deep connection from before, it’s fun but..........  
As we lay there afterwards I think about his family car comment – he wants a family car?  
“What would your next car be,” I ask in the early morning glare.   
“Are you still putting my Skoda down?”   
“Yes,” I giggle.  
“Oh I don’t know he says – maybe a Prius,” he says this time, maybe sensing my discomfort at the family car comment. Then he kisses me, laying there wrapped in his arms, under the warmest fluffiest duvet ever, he kisses me gently.  
“You know I’d never make you do something you aren’t ready for,” he says quietly, I nod though I’m not sure and I reach to run my hand down his face and tell him what I’m feeling. Of course his mobile goes off then and it doesn’t stop. It is, afterall, his birthday.  
The rest of the day is a blur, we have breakfast with his family and then friends keep piling in and David goes back to his flat to get ready and prepare for the day. I spend the afternoon wandering around Cardiff with Lawrence, Billie (in dark glasses) and Karen. It’s fun to play tourist. Billie has lived here for the past two years (mostly) and is a great tour guide and it’s fun and keeps my mind from replaying things over and over in my mind.  
By the time we make it back to the hotel I have enough time to shower and get ready and make it downstairs to the main reception rooms. The elegant rooms are all decked out in a Doctor Who theme and the whole room is full of cast and crew from the show as well as family and a few of our core friends group including, thankfully, Arabella and her family. I am enveloped by the children and hugged by Arabella.  
David arrives fashionably late for the swanky affair and is immediately swamped by people, in fact through the whole evening he is surrounded and I hardly get close. I’m just one of his friends, part of the crowd and I’m not sure how I feel about it. I suppose he’s protecting me, us from being discovered but as I watch a string of other women hanging off his arm I feel a twinge of jealously. I’m currently a mass of confusion and contradictions and I’m not sure anymore what I want.


	16. In Con TEXT

“You’re supposed to enjoy yourself at your boyfriend’s birthday party,” Lawrence Fox says offering me a champagne. I haven’t had much to drink and I’m skulking in the corner on my own.  
“You’re supposed to be able to spend time with your boyfriend at his party,” I hiss back wary of who can hear us. The answer to that is probably no-one. The music is loud and the cake has been cut, speeches spoken and David’s parents and Arabella and her children have just retired. It’s not that late, just before 10pm and I’m thinking of leaving too.  
I take the alcohol from Lawrence anyway and drink it straight down much to his amazement.  
“Do you want another?” he asks and I look around the room. Billie and David are dancing up a storm on the dance floor, a crowd of other actresses and crew members around them.  
I sigh and shake my head.  
“I think it’s time I went off to bed, I’ve got to drive back tomorrow and my mum is arriving ahead of the start of previews on Tuesday,” I say, still watching my gyrating “boyfriend” and his harem.   
Lawrence follows my eyes and nods.  
“Do you want me to tell him you’ve gone?” he asks solemnly and I nod.  
“Are you okay?” he asks. It’s any interesting question. Am I alright? I actually really don’t know if I am or not. I don’t know anything at the moment. I’m floundering. I don’t know what to say so instead I ask a question that only two of us in the room would ever face.  
“After being in your father’s shadow, what’s it like to be in Billie’s?”  
“Aaah!” he says like a light bulb has gone off over his head and suddenly he sees what I’ve been struggling with.   
“Most people don’t know we’re together yet,” he said matter-of-factly.  
“And when they do?”  
“Billie’s famous but David is going to be a whole other level and while my dad is well-known and my family has a tradition, I don’t think we’re that well-known, particularly not outside of the UK. But your family, well your mother is everywhere!”  
I sigh.  
“I feel........I don’t know what I feel,” I sigh.   
He put his arm around me and gave me a brotherly hug.  
“You’ll sort it out,” he says as we embrace and then breakaway quickly. I excuse myself and head for the lift, for our room, mine.  
The moment I leave the ballroom my phone vibrates into action like it’s been alarmed to work as soon as I step over the threshold and out of the festival of the Tennant.   
I don’t need to look to know who it is, I can guess. I don’t want to look but then decide if it isn’t who I suspect it is and instead my mother or father or Alan with something important then I’d kick myself.  
My hunch was right.  
Tom Hiddleston The man who seems to share a brain with me.  
It’s not a long and complicated message. It’s not even a shock or surprise. It’s simply.............................................  
“Have you told him yet?”   
He knows me, we share a brain I’m sure. He knows the answer to that question. But he asks it anyway because if he doesn’t ask then it will remain unspoken. I’m kind of leaning towards that at the moment, slipping home tomorrow and just letting it slide.   
“Who are you? Jiminey frigging cricket?” I text as I take the lift up to the room.  
“Let your conscience be your guide,” is the comeback as the doors slide open and I’m on my floor. I make my way down the corridor and enter through my room rather than David’s.  
“No chance yet!” I tap flopping onto my single bed. It’s firm and small and not going to cut it after sleeping on that heavenly cloud of a mattress last night. Confusion or not I know I’d rather be next door in the king-sized bed.   
“Chicken,” comes the reply.  
“Haven’t you got work or partying to get back to?” I text back. I’m tempted to turn off my phone but I don’t just in case David texts me wondering where I am. Though I’m sure he’s guessed and or Lawrence has let him know and part of me is also quite sure he doesn’t care, he was having a lot of fun without me. And I’m just a little bundle of confusion.   
Tom thinks better of replying and I think better of staying up. I grab a quick shower and slip under the covers and into a restless kind of oblivion.  
But oblivion only lasts an hour when a name, a voice pulls me back to the real world.  
“Juno?” it asks gently in the half light of a bedroom illuminated by soft table lamps. My eye opens on it’s own accord and I see two big brown eyes looking at me with concern.  
“Are you okay darlin?”  
I nod sleepily, because now he’s here I’m quite sleepy again. Relaxed maybe or seeking refuge from the inevitable.  
“Don’t you want to come back down and join in the fun?” he says quietly, he’s had a bit to drink from the look of his face but he’s not completely lost to sobriety yet.  
“You’ve got plenty of people to dance and have fun with,” I yawn.  
He laughs pulling the covers off me, “Come on Junie you’re usually the life of the party and I may have plenty of people there but I want my best girl, I want to show you off!”  
I take a really really big breath.  
Tom’s text is playing in my mind.  
“But I’m not your best girl – I’m one of the girls you’re seeing,” I sigh. He looked like he had whole harem downstairs earlier and after a very quiet teens and 20s he deserved to have fun.  
He laughed, obviously imagining this going differently to the way I want it.  
“You!” he said grabbing my hand and pulling me up. “You are the only girl I want and I want to show you off.  
“I want to dance with you and maybe even kiss you in front of a few of our friends. I want more than friends with benefits, I want......”  
I sigh again.  
And he looks at me, properly for the first time. The chocolate of his eyes melt my heart and I wonder if I’m doing the right thing. I’m an idiot, I really really like this man, I want to be with him. He is perfect. Hundreds of women would kill to be in my position – millions soon and yet............  
“Are you okay?” he asks seriously. I’m now on the edge of the bed dangling my feet trying not to look at him. He sits down next to me, I can feel his body heat he’s so close and it makes this all the more difficult. I have so many feelings for this man. He’s my best friend and I don’t want to lose that but I don’t want to lose me either and it’s a danger. I could drown in this man and I’m not ready, I’m not me yet, I’m still evolving.  
He takes my hand in his and I turn to him.  
Flood gates explode in my head and words gush full-force out of my mouth.   
“I’ve been Emma and Ken’s daughter forever, I’ve never really lived on my own or been seen in my own right and you are amazing and about to be huge and it scares me. I’m going to go from Emma’s daughter to David’s girlfriend and I’m not ready. I have to keep building me and I don’t want to get lost in you and us – not yet not for a few months. Not until after my movie comes out and I’ve done The Tempest – until I’ve come back from Sweden.”  
It flows out. I feel relief and I feel like I want to throw up. I feel better and 30,000 times worse.   
I can’t look him in the eye.  
I feel his hands move on mine.  
“My mother is sick, Juno,” he says softly.  
“I don’t know how long we’ll have her. I’m 36 Junie – by this age my parents had three children and I don’t even have a serious girlfriend. I don’t want to play the field forever,” he says quietly, one hand on mine the other on my cheek, tilting me to look at him.  
His brown eyes are beautiful and I could be a goner if I look at him too long.  
“I just need another eight months,” I say, tears are welling.   
“I’m only 26 on Monday, I’m not ready for everything, it’s overwhelming,” I hiccup and he pulls me close.  
“We’re good at bad timing Junie,” he says as he crushes me against his chest. I stay there for a few minutes, neither of us talk. I feel safe and yet I feel suffocated too. Too close to him, I feel like a coward. I wonder if I’m making a mistake and I feel a little relief.  
I pull away a little but an arm stays around me.   
“I love you, you know,” I say looking up into the soft chocolate of his eyes.  
“I know Junie, I know.  
“Friends?” he says and I nod.  
“For now?” I say.  
He nods but it’s slow and I wonder what is going through his head but I don’t dare ask, I wonder but I don’t want to know. I don’t want to break my heart or his.   
“Come,” he says quietly.  
And I do, I change and we go down and we dance and we drink with Billie and Lawrence and Phil and all the Who Crew like nothing has happened.   
I’m still not sure exactly what has happened if I’m honest.   
We don’t really touch, there are no real slow dances. We are just two friends hanging out.   
Eventually the party breaks up and we go back to our room. I contemplate going to the other room to sleep but he grabs my hand as I open the door. His eyes are sad and big and I can’t leave. We make love. It’s not frantic or passionate, it just happens like it needs to.   
Does it feel like closure or is it just “this should hold us for now? I couldn’t tell you. Not then.  
At 6am the light is coming in the room and I’m going out.   
He doesn’t wake, well maybe he does but he doesn’t give himself away.  
I don’t cry until I get to my car.


	17. Happy birthday baby

THE best birthdays are the ones you expect least of.   
I didn’t expect much from turning 26. I think I’d expertly ended any chance of love and happiness and as I drove back to Stratford I suddenly realised how lonely this industry is. As you’re coming up, you work or you love, you can’t do both. And for someone like me, someone driven, someone who looks like she has it easy, a free ride to the good roles, for someone like me it’s even harder.  
I’d never felt so lonely in my live before. I’d been on my own, I’d travelled away from my family, had my family spread around the world but right now, this was the bottom of the rock. I’d smacked full force into the bedrock of emotions.  
I was determined to throw myself into my work. I’d sacrificed something, something I thought I wanted for this and it had to work.  
It’s quite amazing how, when you are lying at the bottom of the well, if you are lucky, really really lucky, someone throws you a life line.  
My phone rang 45 minutes out of Cardiff.  
“Just checking in,” came a disembodied voice and one I didn’t expect. Carrie, under instructions from a certain blonde busy-body from Europe. I knew he wouldn’t be available for a day or two due to schedules so I hadn’t expected him to call. But I needed a friend and he’d provided one. It’s funny he can be the most self-centred creature in the universe sometimes and others...........  
We chatted about everything and nothing and somehow I centred myself. And in the course of that chat I got to know her properly, not as competition for a man we both liked but as friends. She could have been jealous – the man she liked wanted her to talk to another woman, was worried about another woman. But she wasn’t and through the course of the chat I sensed that her relationship with Tom was changing too, that she saw some of what I was going through in their situation. None of us were really in a position to have a full life – particularly not Tom and I – she said as much, that we were two peas in a pod determined to succeed, determined to throw ourselves into our futures. The nice, and weird thing, is that she didn’t judge us, either of us.   
I got to Stratford because of Carrie Mulligan, I got there in one piece and I didn’t turn around and go back to Cardiff and beg David for another chance or drive into a ditch.   
It was nice – I’d not had a lot of close female friends over my life, but I felt like I had one now.  
My flatmates were out when I arrived back, I grabbed some food and slunk up to bed quietly to block out the world and sleep, sleep before tomorrow. The last prep day before we started previews.   
Morning light streamed through the window of the gorgeous old house, earlier than expected, earlier than I’d have guessed for late April and noises eminated from the stairs – lots of noises.   
Was I in the right house??  
Had I stumbled in here in the dark and picked the wrong place?   
It was mid afternoon when I arrived so that wasn’t it.  
No. I knew those voices and that song and I had been summarily invaded by the Thompson/Wise clan.  
My door was flung open and there in full flight was a large portion of my family including my flying baby sister who landed on the bed before my eyes were fully open, jumping up and down like an over-sized Jack Russell puppy. God I love that kid – the bonus prize of my family, like me but enough like my step-father to be a little more laidback. The child jumped into my arms and the happy birthday song was sung. It was barely 7am and I had to be at the theatre space by 8.30am to start work but by god I was going to have cake and presents and family and the whole shebang before breakfast. I didn’t know how or when they got there but I was glad of them.  
The cake is pushed in my direction – all lit up like a Christmas tree – 26 candles – thank god it’s big. I notice the Tardis with the doctor poking out on the top and try not to bristle. Try to keep my head on the here and now I have little chance for anything else. Gaia “helps” me blow out the candles (bags not the spitty bit where she got too close) before thrusting a few small presents towards me.  
My main one though seems to be a laminated picture in a large envelope.   
“It’s a washer!” Gaia explains as I open up said envelope.   
“We aren’t just giving the picture though, Mummy bought you a washer for our new house!” she says seriously.  
My bedroom has now started to resemble Euston station at peak, my parents (sans Ken) sibling, two of my god parents and my flatmates are all in the attic room and I start to wonder if the lovely old wood floor will take this much action.   
“OUR new house?” I say to the excited almost six year old (she’s just turned five but we have to say almost six or face the wrath) now burrowing down under the covers. Thank god I was wearing PJs and hadn’t flopped down naked. It had always been a fantasy of mine not one I’d been able to achieve yet thanks to the joys of room-mates, various parents and afore-mentioned second off-spring of my mother.  
“Yes Daddy took me to see it with the builder man to do the spection!” she says, I see my mother bristle and whisper “inspection”. “Yeah that” she whispers back.  
I don’t laugh, I like living and our mother is watching us like the grammar nazi she is.  
“There are two bed rooms!” she says matter-of-factly again.  
“You don’t need two rooms, can the big one be mine?” I laugh at her finally. “Well I thought I’d have the big one and the other one could be my office and spare room for friends.”  
“I’m your friend and you have a room at Uncle Kens because he’s your family, you’re my family!”  
“I like your logic Gaia!” Alan says plopping on the bed next to me – no go ahead it’s a queen big enough for my entire family. My room-mates are out finding plates and Mum and Rima are out obviously preparing the cake for serving because that’s what I needed for breakfast this morning – chocolate cake. Greg places himself carefully on the bed and the first wave of the invasion is complete.   
“But Juno might like to keep it for other friends too!” he says, there’s a glint in his eye, I worry about glints in his eye – with bloody good reason!.  
“David might like to sleep there,” he says testing the water. “He’s Juno’s friend.”  
“Doesn’t he have his own house uncle Alan?” she asks.   
“Well yes he does but he might like to visit Juno for a sleep over.” He’s just teasing and he doesn’t know but the words cut I try to look away of course I look straight into the eyes of my concerned mother coming through the door bearing cake and I know I’m for it later.  
“Actually we saw young David on the television the other night in that Friday night show,” Rima says as she comes back in behind my mother.  
“He was talking about being the master in bed,” she adds raising an eyebrow.   
“Oooh is the true Juno?” Alan says slyly.  
I go red.  
“But isn’t David the Doctor, he’s good and the master is bad, and the Doctor has a sonic screwdriver and,” Gaia says. I may or may not have indoctrinated her into the ways of Gallifrey which I may or may not now be regretting.   
“Cake anyone!” mum says steering the subject away from David and I suddenly love that woman more than the life she gave me. I love her more when I realise I have Tardis and not the face of the Doctor.   
The next 20 minutes is spent consuming cake, opening presents and answering calls (Dad first and foremost with an offer to buy me a fridge and my grandmother, who I’m surprised isn’t sitting on my duvet already but is “coming down later today”). Every gift is house related – even when I get to work 45 minutes later, full of chocolate cake and energy. We get straight to work on stage making sure we know everything backwards ahead of tomorrow night’s first preview. No one mentions my birthday, my family is safely stashed back at their lodgings, my phone is off, my flatmates aren’t present for this bit it’s just main cast and we work. It’s a balm for what ails me – I throw myself whole heartedly at it. No-one asks me what happened in Cardiff, not that many people actually knew where I was going and I’m allowed to be Miranda not Juno for a few hours.   
Until lunch and suddenly people come from everywhere, there is a lunch spread on at the pub and I’m dragged out to enjoy it. Greg presents me with a couple of pictures from the official shoot we had a few weeks ago – signed by the whole cast and framed in art-deco frames and I suspect a large ratfink mother in the decor choices but I can’t be sure – well not until she turns up and he thanks her.   
We go back to work for a couple of hours, going through everything backward and forward. In the end it’s close to 7pm and there are just Patrick, Greg and I left and I’m looking forward to a nice shower and a quiet night before tomorrow. The nerves are hitting big time, even though I know I’m prepared and I have this.  
Patrick kisses me on the cheek and hands me a present he’s obviously been keeping in the dressing room. It’s a beautiful 20s-30s style whiskey decanter and I thank him profusely well Greg hands off a single malt to go in it that I’m going to have to hide from my family. I promise to use both when I move into my new flat (which will hopefully be when we transfer to the West End in six weeks (we have two weeks to acclimatise to the new theatre and some of that time is earmarked to move in the basics). I hug them both and walk back to my lodgings only to find the entire family there in ambush.  
I run up stairs begging for a shower before I’m dragged out to dinner.  
What am I really doing?  
Well I am having a shower but I turn on my phone too for the first time since breakfast and hold my breath.   
There are messages from friends, Arabella, friends from school, Oxford, RADA – every man and his dog, except David.  
I suppose we’ve done the birthday thing but I can’t help but feel a little disappointed.   
I throw myself in the shower, then grab some jeans and a T and head down to meet my family – just in time to see a huge bunch of pink roses arrive through the door.  
“Ohhhh I bet I know who they’re from,” Rima says with a knowing look. I smile because so do I and I know she’s off kilter.  
I know I’m right for sure when the delivery drivers are revealed as Carrie and Andrea and suddenly I feel like the whole world is here. The card is from Tom and is full of Shakespeare quotes. I knew the flowers were his. He has form – these are pretty much the same colour he sent me when I started West Wing. I remember getting a bunch of roses from an admirer after my first Rada show and admitting I preferred soft baby pink to red. I didn’t even know he’d heard but here was a second bunch.   
Dinner was at a local Indian restaurant and was full on and fun, cast members, family and friends all together. It was a moment to savour to enjoy. A moment to take a deep breath before the madness started tomorrow.   
We walked home as a big group, peeling off as each group passed their accommodation until there was just my mother, stepfather and flatmates. My little sister had flagged and was held in her father’s arms for the trip back to my house. They had managed to get the house next door, trust my mother to know someone!  
As we walked, she put her arm protectively around me and asked me if I was okay.  
My phone chose that moment to vibrate in my pocket and I quickly fished it out.  
“Happy Birthday Baby!” read David’s message.  
“Yeah all is right with the world,” I said smiling.


	18. The Tempest

There is a storm brewing, I’d been on the edge of it for a while but now it’s washing over me, enveloping me. A swirling, whirling storm of emotion and hurt and lily-white legs in board-shorts.  
I’m sitting in my nearly empty flat in London on the beautiful parquetry floor where one day there will be were due to open on the West End for a short season in a day or two. It had been a huge success and reviews had been over-whelming for production, Patrick and for me personally. There had been offers of other productions and my movie was coming out soon and there had been offers from that, I had a burgeoning career and a new flat leather lounges and chairs that match but not quite, where one day there will be coffee tables and a beautiful parquetry dining table with miss-matched chairs.   
Now there is only me. Me sprawled out on an old rug, with a newspaper spread in front of me – one of the bad ones – a wounded animal with the weapon of my mass destruction in my hands.   
I’d been so busy I hadn’t had time to scratch, the only people I’d seen in the past six weeks were my cast mates, and on occasion, my friends and family who had come up to watch. After the initial invasion, I’d had my dad in town for a week allowing me work with him on Wallander in the morning and then get on stage in the afternoon and evening. it was exhausting but worth it. It had also been the first time he’d seen me on stage in a proper Shakespearian play. He had never worked with Royal Shakespeare and had no affiliation but this was still his world and he was still insanely proud to have me inhabiting it and prouder still that I was doing it on my terms not his.   
The third week had been when David was due but he cancelled on me. I didn’t think much of it, he had a lot of promotional work, he wanted to spend time with his mum and he was about to start filming a television special and of course preparing for the next series of Who. But we were good, as far as I was concerned anyway, we were texting and talking again. They weren’t huge essays or long conversations but neither of us had that kind of time.  
I hadn’t seen him but we were both busy, insanely busy.  
But we were good.  
And Tom was home,   
He’d arrived home a month ago and had been straight onto a television set for some period piece or other but he was back in London again as of yesterday. He’d had come to an understanding with Carey, they weren’t together but neither were they completely not together. They had what David and I had I think.   
I was glad she was still friends with him, Carey was part of my circle now, we’d become friends and in fact she, Andrea. Rima and I had been searching for pieces for my flat in the past few days. Not too many, just essential things – a desk, a bed.   
Mum had moved a lot of my clothes over while I had been away and my grandmother had found me a beautiful tallboy for my smalls and t shirts. So by the time I arrived back in London last week my clothes were mostly here not at my mother’s or father’s, my bed was in and Andrea had bought me black satin sheets which someone had washed and put on the bed. Arabella had bought me crockery, Andrea glasses and I had a canteen of cutlery from Rima and Alan. It would be almost a year before I had everything else in place – thanks to an interior decorator friend. However by the time I got back to London things had been put in train and I was   
on my way to having my own slightly liveable space with enough “mod-cons” to be able to eat, sleep and wash.  
Tonight to celebrate I was having friends round for an unofficial housewarming, a catch-up – a drink lots of red wine and eat pizza night.   
He rang this morning.  
I thought we were good.  
He didn’t want me to see the paper accidently.  
He didn’t want me to find out that way.  
I rushed down and tortured myself anyway.  
“Just a few weeks,” he said.  
The couple of days away on the continent was spur of the moment thing, he hadn’t thought it over. Didn’t realise he’d been papped.   
She was the actress from before, the one he’d gone out with a couple times before we almost...............  
Sophia, a minister’s kid like him. An Actress. Younger than me.   
I wished him luck.  
She made him happy and she wants a relationship not just stolen moments “you understand Juno don’t you?”  
“Of course David, it’s all good – I have a big movie in the works, theatre productions, it’s all good.”  
We were all good.  
I had worked my way through a bottle and a half of red when Carrie arrived with the pizzas.   
I was all good.   
She rang Tom.   
Andrea was there.  
And I was lost.   
He was only a man why was I losing it like this.  
Tom picked me up, I cried into his shoulder. I was embarrassed later.   
There were whispers. Tom made me tea, Carrie went for milk. We ate pizza’s. No more wine for me. Water and tea and sympathy. I didn’t need sympathy. I done this to myself and it was okay, it was what I wanted.  
I was sober by the time Andrea and Carrie left well kind of. They both had busy days on sets, on stage. Tom stayed. He was back for a day or two. I shouldn’t be left alone I’d heard Carrie say. He agreed. She’d asked him to stay.   
We talked into the night about everything except the one thing, I didn’t want to talk about. The David-sized elephant in the room. Eventually we curled up together on my bed with a little Scotch and cold pizza.  
I woke up in his arms in the morning. We were still fully-clothed and nothing happened.  
It was warm and comforting and too too safe.  
We spooned, he was big I was little. He was hard behind me when I woke, morning wood. But it was weird, I didn’t feel awkward about it, it was a fact of life young men are going to wake up hard from time to time if they have a woman in their arms, it didn’t really mean anything other than rampant hormones and if anything it was more than a little flattering.   
I felt him turn warm as he woke up. I tried not to laugh, he was embarrassed.  
I lent back against him. He flinched.  
“I’m so sorry,” he said earnestly trying to pull away.  
“It’s okay,” I said sleepily.  
“It’s a normal part of life and I’m honoured someone’s body reacts to mine at the moment even if it just my totally plutonic best friend.”  
He sighed.  
“You’re the most attractive and beautiful woman I know and it’s not your fault David didn’t see fit to wait. Personally I think he’s an idiot.”   
I smiled pulling away and turning around.  
“You have to say that you’re my friend!”   
“And while your morning wood is a lovely compliment it’s obviously stopping the blood to your brain if your saying stuff like that so I’ll get you a towel and you can have a shower if you like.”   
He is still blushing but he laughs and agrees.  
I try not to look at how big the bulge is in his trousers is as he walks away. But it’s hard (literally) – he could have a girl’s eye out with that thing. I thought David was a big boy (Billie didn’t call him Tenninch for nothing) but I’m thinking if Tom were to ever become the Doctor, he’d turn things up to eleven. My insides turn decidedly warm and melt into liquid – I’m going to need the shower after him. At the time I tell myself it’s just a natural reaction and doesn’t mean anything.  
My phone rings after he heads to the shower. It’s Carey checking in. I feel a bit sheepish, I mean they are kind of over but he’s still her sort of her boyfriend or at the very least her ex-boyfriend and she’s become a friend and.........and I’m ogling and we’ve shared a bed and he’s and I’m............... Mind you BLOODY LUCKY WOMAN. Though this is Tom and well he’s Tom and I can’t think about him that way because, let’s face it, thinking about him this way is why there is a couple of empty wine bottles on my kitchen counter and a man probably having a good wank in my shower.  
I feel a bit weird talking to her but she asks how am and if Tom is still there and I tell her he’s in the shower.   
And then she floors me and says it would be okay if something happened between us, now or in the future.  
I assure her it wouldn’t and hadn’t and turn a fetching shade of red..  
“He’s my friend,” I tell her.  
“Yes but there’s something there, there always has been – all the time he and I were together, you two, you could see it. I didn’t want to like you because of it and then I realised that you probably weren’t even aware of it.  
“He’s my friend,” I repeat my mantra.  
“But neither of you are going to want a serious relationship for a long time and so it would be perfect.............”  
“Bloody hell Carey are you trying to give me you exboyfriend?” I say cutting her off – even more shocked.  
She’s giggling now.  
“Well no, but don’t hold back because of me Juno – we’d still be friends if you happened to wake up in bed with him one morning.”  
I sigh – that would be this morning though not in way she’s suggesting. The conversation is freaking me out a bit, I’m not brilliant with open and frank discussions with other females and it’s making me more than a tad uncomfortable. Okay I’d chew my own ear off if I could.   
It’s a nice sentiment and I appreciate it, I do, but well it’s Tom and as much as she’s saying that now, I’m not so sure she’d really mean it. People say things but then the reality hits. Not that the reality is about to hit here with Tom and I, I tell myself.   
I sigh.  
“David and I were friends with benefits and look how that ended, I think it’s over-rated to be honest,” I say and turn to find a towel-clad Tom Hiddleston eyeing me thoughtfully and it’s my turn to blush.   
He cocks his head in a “who is it and what are you talking about” way and I mouth Carey. His eyes bug out.  
A little later after I get off the phone by basically childishly telling Carey I have food on the stove and handing the phone to Tom before running into the bathroom for a shower of my own, Tom and I end up talking.  
Over tea and toast and cold pizza (I don’t have a microwave to heat anything up in and anyway we like cold pizza) we talk about David and me, sex and friendship. And the upshot is, we both agree we’re friends, we clear the air, set the boundaries, agree that we’re attracted to each other, but we aren’t going to act on it. We laugh, we talk and our friendship is stronger and better and I feel stronger and better.   
That’s all.  
Friends.  
Now I just have to get my friendship with David back on track because I’d hate to lose him because of some blonde.


	19. Blonde Leading The Blonde

IT took Tom and I a whole year and a half to break our “no sex pact” and throw our rules out the window.  
Personally I blame Sophia Myles but that’s just my fall-back position these days.  
Sophia and I were never going to best friends. I decided that the night we met.  
But just because we weren’t going to be braiding each other’s hair and have PJ parties together didn’t mean I wasn’t going to be incredibly pleasant to her or at least die in the attempt.  
We finally met a week or two into the London run of The Tempest.   
She arrived at a performance on David’s arm not for any smug possessive reason but because you can call me a glutton for punishment - I asked him to bring her.   
He was too important to lose as a friend – I worked too hard to make new ones if I lost him from my circle, I’d joked to Carey. But really, I couldn’t imagine any incarnation of my world where he wasn’t part of it, wasn’t insanely important to me. And so I bit my tongue took a big breath and was the bigger man, person and insisted on him bringing her along when he finally saw The Tempest. I didn’t want to give her any reason to cast me as the big bad wolf and cut me off from David for good. I was going to be madame sweetness and light   
He wanted this girl and I wanted him. And if I couldn’t have him in the biblical sense I’d settle for the continuation of our friendship.   
And the meeting went well, she said all the right things about my performance and was charming and sweet but for some reason it never quite felt sincere. At the time I blamed jealousy, reflecting back – she was acting every bit as much as I was. I wanted to like her but she just seemed too much in the same vein as the abdominal Kahli, I couldn’t put my finger on it but something just felt, well a bit off.  
But it didn’t stop me. We all went out after the play that night, giving time for Patrick and Greg to chat with David about Hamlet, though as my schedule filled up, the likelihood of me joining the fold appeared to be less and less but still I could hope. Sophia hung on every word of the conversation and I wondered if it was more for professional reasons than anything else. The alarm bells went off in the back of my head. But I was determined not to hear them.  
We settled into a sort of friendship after that and when the show’s run finished David invited me over to his flat for dinner. Tom was my date and while she was nice and charming, her smiles never quite made her eyes and she was too flattering. Tom seemed caught up by her and David was more and more besotted so I tamped it down, I was jealous, she had what I wanted and I didn’t like it. So I persevered and tried not to notice when she flirted just a little too much with any male that was around at the time, any male that might help her career.   
In the end I was glad to get away, glad to fly the coup and go to Sweden. For such a dark and depressing show, being on that Wallander set was glorious, hard work, often cold, but glorious. I had my dad and my best friend and a whole bunch of amazingly professional people to work with.   
I missed Who though, the role Russell and I had talked about came and went while I was away but it was all good because my replacement was amazing. It’s still my favourite of Carey’s roles – she is Sally Sparrow and I’m kind of glad I didn’t have to deal with those angels – I had nightmares watching it – making it would have been a bridge too far.  
And Carey kept an eye on David while I was away. They didn’t film much together, it was doctor light episode shot while he was off doing something else with John Barrowman. But she was there – my eyes on the ground. I needed that, needed to have a second opinion about Sophia. It couldn’t be just me could it? Tom thought she was something special, even my dad, who had met her at a dinner party at mine before we left, liked her. She seemed to know how to push the right buttons if you had a penis, but I didn’t so I was sure I was paranoid.   
“So am I allowed to not trust David’s girlfriend?” Carey had said during a phone call after her second day on set. We were joking that a year ago we’d have died to swap places – she was with my “boyfriend” and I was with hers though now both were relegated to the friend zone and it had been a while since either of us had had a boy between our thighs.  
She’s been there for a couple of days when Sophia turned up for a weekend in Cardiff.   
“She had to be the centre of attention,” Carey said. “I don’t know what it was, but it was kind of like Freema and I didn’t exist.”   
I sighed “see I said that but Tom won’t believe me!”  
“But she makes him happy? He’s happy right?” I asked.   
“Yeah he seems so – they’re going away this weekend somewhere and then she’s off filming in Canada for two months. When do you come home?  
“Next week, we film in England for three weeks then I’m off to New Zealand,” I say.  
“And how’s Tom,” she answers slowly and I can hear a bit of mischief in her voice.  
I laugh. “Subtle! He’s fine – chasing production assistants.”  
“You two will be the death of me!” she giggles.  
“Never going to happen,” I laugh.  
“Never say never!” she giggles back preparing to hang up – this is our usually “conversation’s over” but we don’t want to hang up banter. I can’t let her go without asking one last favour. I’m worried about him, I shouldn’t be but I am.   
“Look after him until I come home, I hear things aren’t great with his mum,” I say quietly.  
“I will!” she replies.  
I don’t see David, or Carey for that matter, when I come home and I’m off to New Zealand just a few days later. The shoot down there takes three months, three months while David is filming and Tom is off doing another television piece. The movie in New Zealand is a lot of work but a lot of fun and a bit of boys club. One of my co-stars flies in from Canada from a film up there, Sophia’s film.   
I hear rumours.   
They break my heart. But I can’t do anything, what can I do?   
I’d be a jealous ex-girlfriend but I have a real sense of foreboding.   
I have a horrible feeling that everything is going to crash down on David at once and I hope it’s not when I’m on the other side of the world like now.   
Communication isn’t easy thanks to time zones and remote filming and by the time I’m back again it’s Christmas. David is back in Scotland but we talk.   
Christmas eve, we talk for an hour or two, I don’t mention the rumours, I can’t bring myself to do it. I feel like a heel, like I’m letting him down. But what can I do? I decide the best thing is just to be there, to keep the lines of communication open. His mother is holding her own again and I promise to visit as soon as I can.


	20. Broken Hearts and Broken Beds

For the next few months though it’s finally about me. I get a chance to sit and work with the interior decorator on my flat. I haven’t seen Tom in months, he’s in Europe now – Shakespeare again and David is in Cardiff. But while I don’t have my boys, I finally have couches and painted walls and my flat is taking shape. I give in and paint my office/spareroom Gaia’s favourite shade of blue and let her put up a few posters over a special pull-out bed that we chose together. She’s at school through the week now but we have a couple of sister weekends.   
I’m feeling human, taking my first breather from work but I look around and I seem to be the only one not part of a couple. Andrea has a new man, David has Sophia and even Tom is seeing someone, though he’s not saying much. I feel a twinge of loneliness I haven’t felt in months. There was a guy in New Zealand but it didn’t really happen. It’s all I can manage though my work card is usually filled to the brim,   
I’m not use to stopping to smell the paint fumes.   
It doesn’t last long, by March I have a short promotional tour for Wallander with dad and Tom. It’s the first time I’ve seen him in months and I’ve missed him – that’s the first thing that hits me, how much I’ve missed his physical presence in my life. He’s become my best friend – I joke about it, but it’s true. He’s the person I talk to about everything – more than Mum or Carey, Andrea or even Rima.   
The second thing I notice when I see him again is that this man was meant to have a beard and glasses.   
He’s gone straight into rehearsing with Andrea and dad to do Chekov. I’m supposed to be out on a movie but the money has been held up, instead I do a television show in London and I hang around, help out back stage. Dad’s directing and I’m often his eyes. I think I want to direct one day and being part of this production is a good place to start.   
I watch them night after night and I’m struck by how far Andrea and Tom have come in two years. I’m struck by the power of Tom’s performance, the nuances.............how he looks in tight trousers.   
My dad is brilliant, but Tom and Andrea hold their own with him. Tom is electric, magic. I offer small pieces of advice, he listens intently, nodding, taking in everything I say, trusting my direction.   
It’s intoxicating.   
He’s Tom, though the moment he steps in that theatre, on that stage he comes alive, he’s a young Russian doctor and he’s handsome.   
I go home and take a cold shower most nights.  
I live close to the theatre, I have a spare room and sometimes he and Andrea stay over. There’s room now and places to sleep and late night Indian. It’s comfortable and nice and companionable. I leave for Hollywood and Tom flat sits for me, he’s the only one i’d trust. His current flame answers the phone a few times while I’m away, it’s all good right?  
I’m okay with another woman in my flat right? A stranger? Well not a stranger - we’ve met but it feels like an invasion of my privacy. Maybe Tom senses something, she’s gone by the time I come back in May and we finally have a proper housewarming party.  
My flat fills with people including David and Sophia and Billie and Laurence, Carrie and her new flame, Andrea and Bill – even Alan and Rima. I look around the room and I see couples everywhere again but that’s okay. Tom’s not part of a couple so we dance – our fun weird crazy dancing, I teach him snake hips we get insanely drunk. David watches us. I’m so drunk I don’t pick up on the weird vibe between David and Sophia, I don’t see trouble in paradise. Tom and I are too busy being well Tom and I. We flop into bed that night drunk and happy, top and tailing in my queen sized bed – a fairly normal occurrence these days.   
It’s not until a day or later when David and I have lunch that I realise something is wrong.   
She’s had a television offer, and is off to Hollywood – the big break, a contact of his got her the audition. He’s happy for her and yet..........His mother is ill again. My heart lurches. I think of the rumours, I think of her in another country with a lot of other opportunities. I think of the lovely Helen McDonald. I see those sad brown eyes. I make a vow in my head that whatever happens I’ll be there for him.   
Dad, Tom and I head to film in the English countryside for a few weeks with the rest of the cast and crew. We fall back into the same rhythm, it’s like coming home. Comfortable warm and fun. And with the initial filming finished I don’t follow the others to Sweden – not immediately.   
I have a couple of auditions and a couple of big projects in the works so while they head on to Stockholm I head back to London. My flat seems strangely empty without my house guest – Tom has all but taken over my spare-room. It makes sense for us to share, He is hardly ever home and neither am I. He hasn’t had a chance to buy himself something and he can’t really commit to renting – this way there is nearly always someone in my flat and rarely both of us at the same time. Still it’s weird to think he’s not here. I hear from him though, from him and dad and various other cast and crew members. I feel like I’m missing out on something, I suppose I am.  
I’m lonely. Mum’s away, so are many of my other friends.  
David’s home briefly back from Scotland and filming a special somewhere.   
So we meet again for another lunch, this time at my place. Pasta, salad, garlic bread and a little wine.  
He asks me about Tom and I.  
I laugh. There is no Tom and I. We’re friends. We’ve always been friends.  
He touches my hand across the table. It’s nice and companionable and the first time we’ve really touched or hung out, since his birthday last year.   
“I missed this!” he says sadly. He’s looking older, long hours and stress and worry are etching on his handsome face. I squeeze his hand.  
“You always have me, no matter what,” I say, meaning it, meaning it more than anything.  
“I’m sorry...........sorry about springing Sophia on you, sorry about my distance, about.........”  
I touch my other finger to his lips to silence him.   
“It doesn’t matter!” I say. I want to say more, I want to tell him I miss him, I’ve missed us.  
But he floors me with what he says next.  
“Sophia, I think she cheated on me with a friend of mine on set in Canada,” he says running his hand through that hair. Whole essays have been written on how ruffleable that hair is, not that I wander onto his fansite. Often. But today, it’s just sad and today as I watch I try not to flinch noticeably, I try not to give myself away. It doesn’t work.  
“You’re not surprised,” he says cocking an eyebrow.  
“I try not to listen to rumours,” I say looking away.  
“And I’m hardly an independent source David.”  
He nods.  
“But you’ve heard things?” he asks.  
“Come on Juno – you’re my friend please?”  
Those big brown eyes – somewhere in his pedigree is a spaniel, I just know it. He breaks my heart but it’s not my place and I’m the last person to need to get tied up in this.  
“And your my friend David, don’t put me here between you – talk to your girlfriend not me please,” I ask, letting go of his hand and taking a big sip of wine.  
“This would have been so much easier if I’d waited,” he says drinking his own wine, I try not to agree.  
“We’re friends though – through all of this,” I say seriously.  
“Mmm,” he nods thoughtfully. I change the subject to work quickly, outlining things I have coming up, prattling on about what I’ve done around the flat. I don’t offer him the tour. I don’t trust myself not to drag him into the bedroom and neither of us need that. I wish Tom was here.   
He leaves after lunch. Normally we would have continued drinking wine and watching dvds and mucking around. But not today. It was good to see him but it broke my heart. I’ll be glad to get out of here, especially if the fan is about to hit the excretia, I don’t want to be here for that. Maybe to pick up the pieces? But then........  
It’s a day later I get the offer. THAT offer, the one that gave me statues – the offer to work with Jane Campion. One of those offers with a script so beautiful that you know you have to do it. So amazing that you know if you do it right, it could take you anywhere and yet you don’t care because it’s all about the job, about script. This could be an academy award, the break that makes you. That makes life easier. This could be anything. I’m at base camp and dad and Tom are away when the initial offer comes in. I read the script and I’m hooked.   
I’m so excited when I get to Sweden. I’m bursting by the time I get to our place in Stockholm - I can’t wait to share this with my family. I wanted it so badly. It will be a challenge but I can’t wait.   
We have the same two big communal homes we had last time. All mucking in together again. The places are empty and so I sling my bag over my shoulder and head up to my bedroom – I know which one it is. It’s so quiet, quieter even than home, which at least gets the noise from the street. These houses are a little out of the main part of Stockholm, quiet and well appointed. I think that’s why we like them.  
My room is up on the second level, small but serviceable and sandwiched between Tom and Dad’s. I reach the top of the stairs just in time to see Tom emerge from his room, blonde curls in bed-head mode indicating he’d just woken up. His eyes narrow down on me and I suddenly feel uneasy.   
Like David two days ago, he runs his hand through his hair but unlike David, Tom’s eyes aren’t soft and sad, they are hard, hard and angry.  
“Oh I thought you’d be in London a few more days,” he says.  
I look at him like he’s gone mad.  
“You knew I was coming today,” I say looking at him, the joy disappearing.  
“What’s going on?” I ask.  
“I just thought you’d want a few more days with your lover!” he spits.  
Okay now I was totally confused. I hadn’t had sex in a good 10 months at least and the only man I’d shared a bed with was Tom.   
“What the fuck have you been smoking?”   
“Don’t give me any shit Juno – I’ve had a distraught woman on the phone this morning, crying because you’re sleeping with her boyfriend.”  
Okay now I’m totally confused and just a touch angry that my best friend was accusing me of something I wouldn’t do in a pink fit, well not deliberately.   
“What woman?” I ask.  
He sighs “What? So you’ve had more than David in your bed?”  
The penny drops.  
“That bitch!” I growl.  
“She rang you?”   
He nodded. “She was really distraught Juno – I know how you feel about him but you could have waited.”  
Questions tumble in my mind and out of my mouth. Why would she ring Tom? How did she get his number? And why the hell was he taking her word over mine. He stood their gaping like a guppy on the dining room table as I tried to grill him.  
I wasn’t happy. I was really not happy.  
“For someone who is supposed to be my best friend you have very little faith in me,” I growled walking towards him. My index finger ground into his breastbone. I was angry, devastated. Not that she’d done something so low, not that she somehow had his number but that he’d believed her. His eyes widened and he backed up against his door. I may not have his height but Tom knew not to piss me off, not that he’d experienced it first hand before – not on the receiving end.  
“She is a trouble maker, I should have listened to my inner voice – I always knew and I thought I was jealous – I have NOT been in David’s bed, she cheated on him and I found out but you know what, I wanted to stay out of it and so I didn’t tell him. I didn’t tell my friend his girlfriend was a skank and then two days ago he asked me and I still said he should talk to her, that I didn’t repeat rumours,” I’m yelling and crying now, words are flowing fast, a touch nonsensically and I’m stabbing him viciously with my finger.  
“I came here so excited about this huge offer I’ve got, I found the one person I wanted to share the news with and he thinks so little of me,” I sob out.  
He’s almost crying now, tears are filling his eyes– I don’t blame him there’d be bruising from my pointer finger – thank god I don’t have long fingernails.   
“I’m sorry Junie, I’m sorry, it’s just it’s David and well I know how you feel about him,” he starts.  
But I wheel away from him, turn on my heels and head to my own door, I’d had him pinned to his and now I just want to get away from him.  
“You arse, you’re the only man who’s been anywhere near my bed for the past year,” I say opening my door to storm away from him but he’s fast, faster than me.  
Two hands stop me. I turn and he’s so close, too close. Way too close. My brain closes down as his lips hit mine so hard that I’m sure we both taste blood. I thought we’d have to be drunk for this to happen but we’ve been drunk plenty of times without this, without my hands being in his hair, his tongue fighting with mine, possessing and being possessed right back.   
He rips my shirt, and I rip his. We have to be close to each other, skin to skin.   
Two years or more of pent up feelings are pouring back and forward between us.   
Before I know it we’re in my room, my bra is gone, his lips have replaced the fabric, I’m arching and moaning and wanting. My hands continue to tangle in those curls, his are sliding the skirt I’m wearing down my body (thank god for elastic). We’re on my bed now I’m in knickers and sandals and he has jeans and boots. I hear the boots hit the ground and my fingers are making short work of the jeans. We are a whirling dervish of hands and fingers and lips and tongues.   
Naked.  
It doesn’t take long for that state to occur.   
There’s little time to think, not that either of us are. It’s all instinct, His lips find all the right places as my arms and legs wrap around him, welcome him, embrace him. Conscious thought has gone out the window, we’re working on emotion, on feel and by god it feels good. I’m ready for him, so ready and he’s just as prepared, big hard,long and ready.   
I sigh out his name when it finally, finally happens. I’m not thinking of the consequences just of his hands pinning mine to the bed my legs around him, my feet on his bum, His words growling in my ear, mine in his, repeating fuck me on a loop and he takes me at my word, hard but slow.   
We’re building and burning, sliding into oblivion, tipping over an edge. I’ve never come without a little digital help but I don’t need it, I don’t know what we’re doing right but it’s the cliché and we come together. I’m shaking around him still when he tips his head so our foreheads are touching and we’re breathing hard. Our eyes are wide and blown, both wondering where the hell that came from and where it’s going.   
I’m still fired up even after my release.   
I’m not sated,   
I want more, much more.   
Is it that he made me angry? Or that I haven’t had anyone since David or that it’s him? Am I punishing him? Do I love him? Is it that he makes me feel safe, I know I can take all my frustration, everything out on him? Or is it that we’ve been building, building to this.   
I kiss him hard and flip him so I’m on top and then I kiss him everywhere, my hands go everywhere, he’s sighing my name and I’m all over him, tasting myself on the important bits until he can’t take anymore and he takes over again. He buries his head between my legs until I’m screaming his name and clawing the sheets. And then I climb him, ride him – he kisses my breasts, sucks, bites, spurs me on, pushes me over again.   
I slump on to him and he wraps his arms around me. We don’t really talk, we’re catching our breath.   
Still trying to come to terms with what we’re doing to each other. I expect him to apologise to be the perfectly educated, mannered boy that he usually is but his slutty trampy side is showing and so is mine.   
He looks like he can’t believe that he has me here and he’s not missing this opportunity.   
He says as much – tells me what he’s going to do next........ It’s only 20 minutes before we go again and I can’t work out where the stamina is coming from. He’s been filming all night and I really haven’t slept for two nights worrying about David and then too excited about the movie.   
He takes me from behind until he explodes inside and I slump, a quivering exhausted mess - the pillow hanging from my teeth where I latched on. We are completely debauched and dishevelled, covered in scratches and love bites, wild hair, wild eyes – two relatively straight-laced, well-bred Brits gone wild.   
Thank god there are no neighbours out here.   
He rolls off and I go for a shower – I have stubble-burn everywhere and I’m covered in sweat. He comes and watches me, like he’s afraid if I leave the room I’ll disappear.  
“Shit Junie,” is all he says as I get in the shower.   
“I don’t know where that came from!” I say shaking my head.  
“Me neither I’m sor...........” he starts.  
But I don’t want my well-mannered best friend back, I grab his hand and drag him into the shower and kiss him again. He gets the message. We go back to my room and spoon, not game to talk about what we’ve been doing for the past couple of hours. Instead we sleep, tangled together.   
In the morning my best friend is back, which is just as well – my phone goes off in the pile of clothes on my floor. I check it and my heart breaks and the tears gush unchecked and wild down my face.  
I show him the phone. I can’t say the words.   
David’s mum has died reads the message from Arabella.   
“You have to go home,” the man wrapped around me again, hugging me to his chest says.  
“I’ll square it with your dad, if you can get a flight.”  
Less than 48 hours later I’m in a different country, in a different bed, with a different man and my head is spinning.


	21. I'm Turning Around

I don’t sleep with David that night. Well I do but there is no swapping of body fluids, no naked romps.  
I still carry Tom’s marks on my body, his bites and scratches. David doesn’t need to see them and I feel no need to show them to him. They are none of his business. More than that I don’t want to get into anything, not now, not while he is grieving for his mother and probably for his lost relationship. He needs comfort and I provide it for him. I’m his shoulder through the day, the arms around him at night.  
I cook for and look after Helen’s boys for her. I support Karen as she wrangles her dad and little brother. I pick Blair and his family up from the airport.   
Everyone is stoic, no one more than Sandy – his upper lip is stiff though his heart is broken. I don’t think about me, about what I did before I got here, I try not to think about Tom about what we did meant and what it meant in the bigger scheme of things. Was it just frustration, just sex or something entirely different? I don’t think about that – well I do but only late at night in David’s bed when he’s asleep. I don’t even think or talk about my big movie offer. My life isn’t about me, it’s about the McDonalds. I am there for them.   
My dad rings everyday so does my mum – she’s just up the road at her Scottish estate and offers to come to me. They are checking up on me, helping me cope I suppose. I’ve never really lost anyone this close before. Not really. I never met my maternal grandfather or paternal grandmother and while on paper Helen was my friend’s mother, she was more than that and David is more than a friend.  
I wonder what would have happened between us if I hadn’t slept with Tom before I got here. I wonder what will happen now, what should happen. Sophia has rung to offer comfort and David has been polite but he’s never asked her to come home and she’s never offered. She has her big break now. Her career is on it’s way, I’m cynical but I’ve become that way because of her.  
Tom doesn’t ring.   
I don’t ring him.  
He’s offering me space I think. Or he’s regretting what we did.  
He can’t regret that can he?  
Maybe he can. In the small hours of the morning I think of him, but it’s not with regret – I miss him. He’s my friend, as important to me as David. I lay next to David and think of Tom. I wonder if I were next to Tom would I be thinking of David?   
It does my head in.  
I only have four days away from set and so does David. He’s in the middle of filming the Who Christmas special with Kylie Minogue. He talks about her a bit, about her own health scares and about how she’s been such a support and comfort. I feel a twinge that feels a little like jealousy.   
I joke and ask if I should be jealous, his brown eyes flash and he tells me no more jealous than he is that I’m working with Tom.  
I pull my shirt up a bit higher in case the mark on my collarbone is showing and assure him and myself that Tom Hiddleston is my friend and only my friend.  
Two days after I arrive we have the funeral. The ceremony is practical and loving without being flowery and overblown. I comfort my friend, he cries on my shoulder and supports his dad. Afterwards while the family gathers during the small wake Arabella (she arrived the night before) puts her arms around me.  
“How is he holding up?” she asks.  
“As best as can be expected,” I say quietly.  
She nods.  
“Stupid girl,” she says. I know she doesn’t mean me. “But at least it means she’s out of our lives, yours and David’s particularly,” Arabella smiles.  
I flinch – David and I. I wonder if I have that perfect set of teeth marks on my hip. Teeth marks that are definitely not David’s. I sip the single malt that Arabella had handed me.  
“What?” she says as she steers me out the back of Karen’s house. They’d had small event at the hospice that Helen had supported in life before adjorning here – just very very close friends and family.  
“I’ve been offered a job – a big one, in New Zealand again, working with Jane Campion!” I say quietly when we are outside. It’s quite a warm summer’s day for Scotland and it’s nice to be away from the family. They are stoic but grief is palpable in the air, touchable, thick like a Scottish mist and I need to get outside to breath even just for a few minutes.  
“And you haven’t told David,” she finishes. I shake my head. How can I? He has lost his mother, he lost a woman he was in love with in some form at least. I’m one of his best friends and I’m running away.  
“It’s probably a moot point anyway,” I say sadly.  
“Why?” she asks. “Because I can’t take it, I’ve made my mark I need to be here for him now. It’s time to settle down and stop running from my future.”   
Her arms go around me and I cry on her shoulder. To any one else it looks like she’s comforting me over Helen maybe Arabella even things that. But I am mourning more than a remarkable woman, I’m mourning a future I wanted for myself. I’m mourning something that I wanted that I know is ephemeral. Tom’s not ready to grow up, he’s got a lot of living to do and David’s a grown up, losing a parent does that for you I suppose. And I’m in the middle and in love with both of them.   
Arabella doesn’t offer me much advice just to follow my heart. This is the most difficult thing I can do because my heart is going in three different directions, to my work and two men who are both incredibly similar and polar opposites and I’m being torn apart and there is nothing I can do about it.  
That night David and I make love, it might be a little too much whisky or just the need to comfort each other or resignation on my part. But it happens. We don’t turn on the light, he doesn’t see Tom’s marks and if he does, he doesn’t say anything. Our lovemaking is everything that my encounter with Tom wasn’t - gentle, sweet and almost sacred. We cry in each other’s arms afterwards and roll away from each other.   
It doesn’t feel wrong, it doesn’t feel right. If I’m honest all I feel is lost. He sleeps well though and at the moment that is all that matters – that I brought him some sort of comfort.   
It doesn’t happen again – it is just the once and we return to our chaste relationship of before, neither of us talking about what we did or initiating more.   
We fly out two days later, him for Cardiff and me for Sweden. We are both literally straight back to set. I’m filming with dad and he hugs me at any chance he can. I don’t see Tom for the first few days and then when I do Dad is always around and there is no time to talk. We are filming intense scenes, I’ve been kidnapped and both Wallander and Magnus are on the case. It’s gruelling and full on and the toughest thing I’ve ever filmed. What makes it worse is that I’m filming this with my real father and one of the people I care most about in the world. And yes it is fake but having people so important to you and having just lost someone who shared a part of your life, made it all just so much more intense.   
I was in tears both on set and off set for most of the two days we were filming the most harrowing of the scenes. On the second night Tom snuck into my room and held me and kept me safe from the nightmares. There was no sex, just physical contact and support which was all I needed – he seemed to understand and it made the decision I’d been coming to all the more heartbreaking and difficult.  
“You’re going back to him,” Tom said the next morning in the early morning gloom of late summer Sweden. It had been Tom’s last day on set last night and he was flying out today. Part of me wanted to send him home with a bang, a big bang but I knew it couldn’t happen. We’d talked a lot in that early morning light about friends with benefits about how important we were to each other and where we were in life. But this was where we were at.   
I nodded.   
“He needs me,” I answered quietly.  
“I don’t have to ask if you love him.”  
I sighed. “Enough to give up my movie.”  
He looks at me like I’ve gone mad.  
“What! No you’ve worked too hard for this Junie – give up on me but not your career.”  
I cry into his shoulder. I don’t want to give up on any of it but David has lost so much.  
“Junie promise you’ll think about this yes?” he says. I don’t answer him I’ve thought about nothing else. Instead I kiss him and he kisses me back. We’re breaking our rules again but it’s in a good cause. It’s that last kiss that kiss goodbye.   
I don’t see him off at the airport but he ring’s me later in the day to tell me that has arrived safely.   
And I throw myself into work. I’m weepy and lost but work grounds me. My dad might suspect something but he says nothing and I’m grateful. A week later I finally fly home, aching all over and emotional from the shoot and life. I flop into my bed and sleep for hours and hours.  
It’s a Wednesday when I arrive home and I sleep through the night and well into the next day, finally woken by a phone call on Thursday afternoon. Tom has been and gone – come home and then gone off to film another project and so I’m alone.   
I feel awful and fluey and sore and the last thing I want to do is talk to anyone. But it’s David and if this is going to work then we obviously have to talk and be together and that’s good – it’s what I want.  
I tell him how I feel and he comes over that evening with chicken soup – luckily not home made.  
We sit on my lounge and we talk and he tells me that he’s officially called time with Sophia but then he surprises me and tells me he’s been sleeping with Kylie Minogue. I’m floored – I find out later that him telling me was down to Tom – that Tom went to talk to David about me quitting the movie and saw him farewelling Kylie and confronted him. I don’t know that now though – this is a conversation for much further down the track. Now all I hear is that he and Kylie are having fun and it’s great to have the company of someone his own age. That it’s sexy and relaxed. He doesn’t think they have a future but for the moment this is what he needs not a relationship.  
I ask what that means for me and he says it means I’m free to go to New Zealand and film and then we’ll see.   
I ask him to stay.   
He says he wants to get back she’s coming over for dinner.  
I’m relieved and yet hurt.   
He leaves.  
I throw up and I’m not sure if it’s the relief or disappointment or anxiety that makes me do it.  
It turns out it’s none of the above.  
I wake up in the morning and I vomit again. My body is still wracked with aches and pain.  
I ring my mum, who is just home from Scotland and she comes over.   
She takes one look at me and rings the doctor and by 2pm on the Friday afternoon I’m sitting in a doctors waiting room.  
By 3pm my life is falling down around my ears.  
I’m pregnant.


	22. To The ends of the Earth

“Are you going to tell him?”   
I look at my mother like she’s’ speaking Swahili.  
I shrug.  
“Are you going to keep it?”  
I shrug again.  
These are perfectly reasonable questions but I’m too numb to think.  
I’m stupid.  
With everything that was happening, I’d not checked the antibiotics I’d been on for the cold I had before we started filming Wallander. I’d always been so careful, so careful. I was paranoid about pregnancy. It was not something I needed at this stage of my life and certainly not in this situation. I was on the pill but I usually used condoms as well. Having a child was the last thing I wanted or needed, it was a “further down the track” thing.  
I was pro abortion but I’d watched my mother’s struggles with IVF and knew I couldn’t do this. Maybe if she didn’t know but she knew and she was here and asking me the unanswerable question.  
Am I going to tell him?  
I wondered who she thought “him” was because from where I was standing, him was they.  
I didn’t know who I wanted him to be. I loved them both but was afraid of the consequences either way. David would want a family and a life together, Tom would acquiesce to having a life together but would feel trapped. Or he would run. I didn’t want to get married and I didn’t want to lose my best friend.  
I strong arm went around me.  
“He’ll understand, he loves you!” she says.  
I look at her blankly.  
“Oh please Juno of course that boy loves you, he may not be ready for fatherhood, but I think he’s loved you since you both started RADA, since he first saw you,” she sighs.  
My eyes widen.  
“You think it’s Tom’s?” I ask incredulously, sure she was talking about David. Sure she’d think I’d gone to comfort him and this was the result.  
“Isn’t it?” she looks shocked, I can see her mind reeling looking for other possibilities  
And now comes the most embarrassing conversation I’ve ever had with my mother. And if you know my mother then you will know how remarkable this statement is. We’ve had some beauties. More frank than you could imagine. I know more about her cycle than is actually healthy thanks to her battles with IVF. It’s why I think (counting the dates and where I was in my cycle etc) that this is much more likely to be David’s than Tom’s. If my cycle is like hers, then Tom was too early – though I’m not sure how long sperm takes to get to it’s target. If this is a girl then maybe it’s Tom. My head is spinning.  
“Um to be honest I don’t know,” I say, my hand drifting to my stomach where there is now a person, well a jellybean who is half me and half, well half a man I love.   
So I tell her the story, leaving out the more lurid details of my encounter with Tom. This is the Juno approved G-rated mother version. She now knows her daughter is a slut, she doesn’t need to know she’s a kinky, insatiable skank.  
I wait for the lecture and instead I get a hug. And a “oh sweetie you poor, poor girl!”   
Yeah not the reaction I expected.  
“Can I ask who you want to be the father?”   
Well she can ask but I’m not sure I want to answer that.  
“David’s lost his mother, it would be nice to give him this, it would be lovely for that family to have a something like this, to have a little Helena to look forward to,” I say cautiously.   
Emma Thompson looks at me seriously for a moment and nods and then laughs her head off.  
She puts her arm around me and pulls me close.  
“What absolute romantic claptrap!” she says. “It’s a sweet sentiment darling and selflessly you to a tee but it doesn’t answer my question.”  
“I don’t know,” I say. “And it’s a moot point, I can’t change the baby’s father if I wanted to.”  
“I know sweetheart,” she says squeezing me again.  
“I suppose I wanted you to finally confront your feelings for Tom, we all know how you feel about David.”  
I shrug.   
“He won’t want this baby, David will!” I say.  
She sighs.  
“Here am I having one last try at IVF and you sneeze with your legs open and bam,” she sighs.  
“I wish it was yours,” I say finally crying properly. The movie of my career is on the horizon and I’m up the duff and in love with two men and worse not sure who was the sperm donor. My mother continues to hug me and we watch bad movies together until Greg rings. Gaia is away at our aunts and this was supposed to be a romantic anniversary evening on the eve of one last IVF trial. Instead while Emma Thompson might be a mother again but she’s 100 percent going to be a grandmother (and it’s not a title she likes I can tell you).   
She doesn’t explain why she’s still with me but she does tell my step father to come over and grab lots of icecream and Indian takeaway from downstairs.  
I’m not sure how I feel about Greg coming and knowing and.............shouldn’t this be my dad?  
My mother and Greg don’t keep secrets. My mother and father don’t talk.  
And while I love my father with a passion, Greg has been more of a hands-on dad over the years and it’s actually him that suggests I talk to my next director and then stay on in New Zealand and have my baby there, somewhere secluded and they adopt it.  
I’m shocked.   
He’s joking I think but it starts something in all our minds.  
I’m doing a small television show for the next two months in London – mainly to be there with my mother for this last ditched IVF. David is in Cardiff and Tom is up North somewhere with Dame Judy. I decide not to say anything –not yet. It’s not that I don’t want to tell them. I do. If I have to go through this it’s only fair they do to. But something is holding them back. I shouldn’t have slept with both of them, I shouldn’t have slept with either of them. I was confused and this has muddied the water more. I think Tom is the reason I can’t commit to David but then David hasn’t exactly declared his undying love. Is Tom the reason David is holding back? And what about Tom? He likes me but he’s still finding his way, still growing up. He doesn’t have a home of his own, he still carries his money in a bullclip rather than a wallet like a student. He’s ambitious and talented and single minded. And so am I. But he’s a well brought up nice boy mostly and he’d do “the right thing”.   
It’s a mess.   
But not telling anyone and letting this little one become, in effect, my sibling not my offspring is a silly idea – both mum and I laughed when Greg suggested it. It’s a 1950s move – mum hiding the teen daughter’s indiscretion. Except I’m not a teen, I’m 27 and I’m an independent woman, letting my mother bring up my baby as her own is just ludicrous. And yet they are aching to be parents again. Gaia needs this and I don’t, I can’t. I have the emotional maturity of a gnat.  
Over the next few weeks as apprehension and the offspring grow and I feel sick and sorry for myself, I watch my mother go through the pain of the IVF and then the heartbreak of it failing for the fourth time.  
This starts to make sense. In my head it starts to feel like this little one was conceived for a reason and not the reason I initially thought. I wasn’t ready for a child but I didn’t want Gaia to grow up on her own like I did.   
Of course it was selfish because while the child would have a great dad, he or she deserves to know whose sperm had brought them into being and that man’s family, especially if it was David deserved to know the baby. Plus these two men were my friends and I love, I felt bad keeping this from them and from my dad. But I knew my dad, if he knew it would be awkward and he would want to know who the father was and he’d want the father to know. And that wasn’t a bad thing was it? Maybe they would sign parental rights over to my mother and stepfather maybe they’d see this as the best solution too? But didn’t they deserve that chance?  
I became determined to tell them even if it made me look like a slut, even if I lost their friendship.  
Then the pictures came out. David and a production assistant on Who and a lunch with Carrie revealed Tom was seeing someone too and he hadn’t told me. We all talked most weeks and neither had told me. So what did I really mean to them? Would this child be an obligation?  
Three months down the track and they had both moved on and I couldn’t, I’m lost and pregnant and alone. Except I’m not, I have my mother.  
And I meet my director and we talk, she flies in from New Zealand, securing more funding, organising things.  
At that first meeting I tell Jane that I’m carrying a baby for my mother and that we want to keep it quiet.  
It’s not a lie.  
I have begun to see this child as hers not mine. As Gaia’s little brother or sister not her niece or nephew.  
I don’t lose the part like I expect. Instead she tells me she wanted to shoot a week or two here as soon as possible before things start in New Zealand in earnest and was I available? Would that help? She didn’t want to lose me for this part. She also offers my mother the part of my character’s mother.  
Unorthodoxly we film with a skeleton crew here in the UK about two weeks later and then Jane flies home to New Zealand to prepare for the proper filming and a month later when I’m 18 weeks pregnant and really starting to show if my jumpers aren’t baggie, I arrive in New Zealand with my co-star Ben. Ben is handsome and talented and amazing, someone I’ve wanted to work with for a long time, someone I have an instant rapport with. Ben is also gay which is an added bonus because the last thing I need now is any type of romantic entanglement.  
We’re are staying at Jane’s place, in a fairly remote beach area. It’s actually not that far from Auckland but could also be a whole universe away from that sprawling little metropolis if you didn’t know better. It’s wild and beautiful. The perfect place to walk on the beach and just talk without worrying about anyone seeing Juno Brannagh with a belly full of baby because he’s growing rapidly now.  
I know he’s a boy – because in a break in filming Jane takes me in for the scan at a small exclusive and private clinic near Auckland where she ne had her own children. Ben is at my side, people assume he’s the dad and he doesn’t deny it. We’ve become friends fast and fast friends. Both Jane and Ben know now – know the truth. It spilled out of me like my bump is spilling out of my clothes.  
I lay there on my back looking at the screen. The little person that I had started to feel in my abdomen suddenly comes to life in front of me. Ben is holding my hand, it helps me not miss the man, men that I really want here. I see him, he looks like an alien and my heart fills with love, it’s warm and wraps over me and round me like a cocoon. He is beautiful and I try to make out who he looks like. Ben laughs, I know my mother secretly hopes it’s David’s – big brown eyes like all the rest of us and her colouring – there would be nothing amiss. I’ve been dreaming about a little boy with blonde curly hair and blue eyes for the past week on and off. I don’t know what it means and I’m not going to analyse it.  
“You know – if he looks like anyone,” Ben whispers when the sonographer leaves the room.”I think he favours your dad.”  
I laugh “oh god now that would be hard to explain!”  
I look at the little face on screen and I’m overwhelmed and I know I need to tell them.   
I just don’t know how.


	23. A Little Lost

The Sonographer takes longer than I expect. She’s checking everything, measuring everything. I’m starting to worry.   
There are a few things that they want to check.  
I hold on to Ben’s hand for dear life not letting him leave when she asks him to. She doesn’t say much.   
But suddenly my little man is very real and not because I got to see him.   
She scared me and the thought of losing him suddenly really brings the situation into sharp focus. This is not an abstract. It’s a person. A little person I created.   
The next day I get a call – there are some abnormalities they need to check out – an amniosentis is recommended.   
My mum has arrived – we all discuss the risks – another scan is call for we do it, we do blood tests.  
I’m trying to work – we’re shooting at full speed now. Between the Doctors, mum and myself we decide to go ahead with the amnio.   
They test the fluid from around the baby. I wish I had a DNA sample from David and Tom an amnio can do a lot of things – they’ve confirmed the sex of the baby and the abnormality is within acceptable rates just from some big arse need. They could have tested the baby’s paternity at the same time but I’m still working out how to broach this all with them. I’ve heard from David a couple of times, he’s broken up with the production assistant and Tom is back to texting me and living in my flat but how do you do this on the phone. Do I just send a picture from the latest scan and say – guess what?  
I have to tell them.  
But how?  
I procrastinate for another two weeks. I’m busy, this shoot is now intense and we are really working hard, long hours.  
And then it’s taken out of my hands. So hard and fast that my head spins.  
Life turns on a dime sometimes.   
I’m 22 weeks and suddenly I feel like I’ve been hit by a Mack truck. I’m hot and cold and shivery and feeling like I’m coming down with the flu again just like at the beginning.   
We are close to finishing filming.  
I’m feeling awful – but I push myself and then................  
Then I collapse.  
My memory of this time is vague – I went in and out of consciousness. An infection from the amnio.   
I’m rushed to hospital.   
I fade in and out.  
My little boy.  
When I’m conscious I ask about him – I’m being monitored and so is he.   
I don’t know how long I’ve been out.  
I occasionally think I can hear my mum and Ben.   
And then Tom?  
Tom?  
I think I’ve gone insane, he’s not here. And if I dreamed surely it would be of David? I love David, Tom is my friend and he’s on the other side of the world. And yet I feel a soft hand on mine. A smooth deep voice, clear blue eyes. A hand on my tummy, words reassuring words.   
I find out later Ben panicked and rang him at my flat. They’d known each other, worked together and so had Andrea. He’d managed to get in touch with him and tell him I was “poorly” and needed a friend. They’d tried to find my dad but he was shooting somewhere remote.   
Tom had been between projects and he’d come.  
He’d come.  
My mother had told him – told him everything. They were talking transfusions for the baby they needed to test – DNA – paternity.  
I knew none of this. All I knew was that I kept seeing a blue-eyed boy – I heard people talking and arguing and then it was dark.   
They left it as long as they could – they gave me what they could but the only way to save me in the end was to deliver my little boy – 23 weeks. They couldn’t even wait for the DNA tests. My mum made the decision in the end with Ben and Jane holding her hand and Tom holding mine.  
He was too little.   
Too little.   
Mum took pictures. He was very red, very long and skinny but still tiny.  
They filled me full of antibiotics and I picked up rapidly.  
I woke to find I hadn’t been dreaming. Tom was holding my hand, his eyes red-rimmed, he took a deepbreath and rang for the nurses when I opened my eyes and smiled at him.   
I was checked and on the mend.  
My boy had been fighting, but there was no hope,  
Too little.  
I looked around the room.  
“David?” I asked.  
Tom looked sad.   
“He doesn’t know – your mum, Ben............. they didn’t think.........” his voice croaked.  
I nodded. He didn’t need this. No he didn’t need this and I didn’t need the pressure. No pressure just to be just to be with my little boy.............Instinct kicked in, I didn’t want to face it but I knew, knew something was wrong. My head screamed with the headache of fever and my heart started to shatter.  
I closed my eyes.   
Tom held my hand.  
The other hand went to my tummy it didn’t feel right.  
“They had to deliver him,” Tom whispered.  
I opened my eyes.   
“He’s tiny and cute Junie but he’s.........” his voice broke.  
“Too little,” I finished my voice croaked and broke and the tears fell.  
“If we can keep him a few more days, he might just.”  
And he did, he held on, he was waiting for me.  
My temperature returned to normal rapidly I was checked again, I’d heal with no permanent damage.   
No permanent damage – code for – I could do this again.   
I’m not sure I wanted to ever certainly not then and maybe not ever.   
I knew now that if we kept him I would keep him. I wouldn’t hand him over to Emma. I made deals with myself and whatever deity there was.  
Tom and I went to the Neo Natal Unit– he was still fighting.  
Too little.  
He waited and then...........then we had to say goodbye but I got to say goodbye. We got the paternity result but we’d said goodbye – it didn’t matter now. He was gone.  
I cried – desperate lost sobs. Tom curled up on the bed around me held me close.  
“My best friend,” I sobbed.  
“Forever!” he sobbed back wrapping around me, mourning my little boy together. Whatever bond we had before strengthened.   
We made a pact to keep this sorrow to ourselves – just Tom, Mum, Jane and Ben – standing there saying goodbye to someone who had been there but not but would be with us forever. I couldn’t face my dad or anyone else with this. It broke me. But some how I finished filming. I let my mother, Ben and Tom fly home and I stayed with Jane for a few weeks, walking on beaches and sharing grief, grief we’d both been through.   
David and my dad both rang – I’d had a bad flu, that was the official word but I was on the mend. I couldn’t bring myself to say any more, to think any more. Jane and I went to counselling and in the new year I got a call from Tom – he was to be Cassio in a production of Othello. Their Desdemona had broken her leg and they needed a replacement. I’d lost everything. I needed an anchor and I found it, I found it in work.   
I went home.  
Numb.  
Tom stayed in my house.  
Curled around me at night like in the hospital.  
I didn’t. We couldn’t. I couldn’t not now.  
Just holding me.  
Nothing more.   
Slowly but surely I started to come back to life, counselling, mum and Greg, I started to comeback to life. Back to work. I got to kiss Chiwetel Ejiofor, to hang out with Tom, with Ewan McGregor with Ed Bennett, our friend from RADA. Working made sense I threw myself headlong into it. Helped by the group around me, a group that became family. That are still my best friends. While the other boys didn’t know what we’d gone through, they did know it was something big. They never asked they just supported, helped, treated me like one of the boys, one of the cast and slowly but surely I became that. Slowly but surely Tom moved into my spare room and my life started to move on.   
It was different though.   
David had a new girlfriend and she had a child. I couldn’t face them. I cut myself away from him. I wasn’t rude, I’d talk if he rang but beyond that I wouldn’t instigate contact. I sort of cut myself off from Arabella as well – again I was busy, that’s what I told her, that’s what I told me. David was getting what he wanted, I should be happy for him and I was. But I had to rebuild my life I had to move on. It was time to grow up and work out what I wanted from life. I pulled out of his performance of Hamlet – I’d been offered a role in an American show a whole season in the 60s –advertising men. I was a little disappointed because I loved working with Greg and Patrick and now Ed was going to be in it too but I had to give myself space,   
I started to write more, I started a diary and short stories. I’d hung out with Tom and our circle of friends during Othello but when it ended and he moved on to his next projects – working with Woody Allen darling - I reconnected with my mother and her friends and with Gaia in a way that I probably hadn’t before. It was clear now it was just going to be us – Gaia and I and I wanted to be her sister, I wanted to be there for her and with her probably. We were family and family was important.  
Part of my life felt empty but it felt like it had to be that way. I doubted I’d ever feel love and romance again, it hurt and it complicated things and I didn’t need that I needed to feel whole, I needed to be strong and independent.


	24. And the Award Goes To

“Sometimes you have to face your demons, Sometimes you have to face your demons, Sometimes you have to face your demons.”  
This is my mantra as I look in my mirror – the big one Alan and Rima bought me – the one that greets you as you walk in the front door of my beautifully decorated but recently ignored apartment in Primrose Hill.  
It’s late 2010 and I’ve just come home from the US.   
It’s Christmas and I’ve been invited to a party.   
“Sometimes you have to face your demons, Sometimes you have to face your demons, Sometimes you have to face your demons”.  
It’s at Arabella’s. You can only shrug off your friends for so long and I’ve been neglecting mine for two years sure people move on and grow up but David and Arabella have been a part of my life and so have the others. I need to reconnect. But part of me just can’t. Part of me doesn’t return calls or forgets birthdays.   
I have an Emmy, an academy award nomination and a book deal now and I have a new set of friends I even have a boyfriend. Okay, had a boyfriend. I’ve been seeing Ed Bennett on and off for the past year but it’s ended, hard to have a relationship when you aren’t in the same country. Though we’re still friends, I’m good at that, and he’s coming with me tonight as my date. Tom had a family thing and to be honest we don’t hang out as much as we did, we’ve been busy. Ed loved working with David in Hamlet both as Laertes and as Hamlet when David did his back in so he was the obvious choice and I didn’t want to do this on my own. David’s back was Ed’s big breakt and led him to work with Spielberg along Tom and Benedict Cumberbatch – the latest member of our little group. Those three are scary friendly now – I stay out of it.   
He’s picking me up.  
Ed.  
He’s picking me up.  
And I’m seeing David for the first time in pretty much two years. We’ve talked on the phone and texted but it’s impersonal polite stuff. He’s been insanely busy and so have I. Emmy’s don’t win themselves and academy awards don’t go to other people in front of you without a lot of hard work. I didn’t win for Jane’s movie and I’m glad to be honest. I’m not sure I wanted a reminder of that time, I didn’t want to wrap my success up in a time that ripped me open so physically and emotional and forced me to rebuild, to become the new Juno. The only thing I need from that experience is my friends. I still keep in touch with both Jane and Ben (Ben was my second choice of date for tonight though he’s all wrapped up in his relationship and I think on the verge of getting engaged so I’d be a bit of a wetblanket). We’ve talked about working together again, it will happen. It’s just when.  
But first I want to work my dad again he’s a little busy in the US with a big budget movie for Disney or Marvel or something (and he’s stolen my best friend) and I have another big film coming up myself. Well big on work, small on budget – the way I like them. I’m rambling, facing my demons is hard. I’m not sure I’m as ready for this as I thought.  
I take a deep breath and look in my mirror again.   
I look good.   
Two years down the track and I’ve filled out and I feel whole - almost.  
I can do this, I know I can.   
I don’t want to. A nice evening with a DVD sounds more like it!   
But Ed arrives at my door, he kisses my cheek and tells me I look beautiful. I’m only wearing jeans red heels and a red top under a military coat but I feel good. He knows something heavy went down with me in New Zealand and he’s seen my scars but to his credit Ed has never asked. Though if he asked now I’d tell him. Well some of it, some of it isn’t mine to tell. But he’s been a good friend and an attentive lover when I needed one. When I was ready for one. Though he wasn’t the first after............. That had to be someone who knew who understood..............someone like a best friend who wouldn’t push or expect and would just let me relearn my body and wouldn’t expect more from the encounter. And then would set me up with someone else who “really liked me”. Someone who would then go off to the US and hang out with my dad and shag American girls.   
Changing the subject again.  
I can do this.   
“Sometimes you have to face your demons, Sometimes you have to face your demons, Sometimes you have to face your demons”.  
We leave and take a taxi, Arabella’s isn’t too far away and the route is familiar, I’ve done it a thousand times. I’m trying to relax and focus on the positives. Ed looks cute and is holding my hand (despite the fact I know he’s shagging his latest co-star on the quiet – we have too many friends in common to keep secrets, maybe) I focus on the evening ahead so there are no surprises. I’m looking forward to meeting Georgia and Ty her son. I’ve spoken to them both on the phone. It’s time to do this.  
We arrive. David’s old flat is now Arabella’s main entertaining area. I can do this. I know I can and it’s made easier when I realise that the guest list includes Alan and Rima – friends of David’s from his Harry Potter filming and from knowing me. I hang with them. Ed mixes.  
It’s nice to have the Rickmans here - Rima knows everything, Alan most of it. It came out a few months ago when one of Gaia’s friends had a baby brother and she asked at a family gathering if she’d have one too. When it was me and not my mother that left the room to cry, Rima came to find me and we talked and I discovered more about her, I discovered everyone has an experience and there are things you don’t learn until you go through it yourself. It’s like a secret club though it’s not a club I wanted to join but here I am, a card carrying member of the secret society of the vagina.  
We talk for a while and as usual the guest of honour hasn’t arrived so I head up stairs with Arabella. I always do that as parties, I’m helping out. I missed this, missed her, this feels normal and natural and I start to feel like myself than I have in two years. I’m cutting up vegies for her and chatting, wine in hand. But it all comes to a very abrupt end when an ashen-faced Allan comes up the stairs, Rima right behind her.   
Something’s up, but it’s too late to run.  
I hear David’s voice and Ed’s. Ed is asking him questions, I hear the words baby my blood chills. Ed may not know exactly what went down with me but he’s not an idiot and I suspect Tom has told him a little more than I have to stop his curiosity getting the better of him. I hear the voice of a young boy and then and the light voice of a happy young woman.............  
Then I see them. David first. He is still so good looking and it takes my breath away. But that’s not what floors me, that’s not what threatens to destroy me.   
It’s the woman behind her, beaming, glowing. It’s the roundness of her tummy, his protective arm around her. I’ve only been here 20 minutes and I’m struggling for breath, I’m struggling to stay here. My world crashes again.  
Georgia Moffett is pregnant, noticeably so – as pregnant as I was when.........  
Alan casually comes behind me and takes the knife I’m holding. He puts an arm around me.   
The breath leaves my body.   
I feel like I’m going to collapse, the world spins. I drop something on the floor and struggle out of Alan’s grip so I can go down and pick it up, pulling in big in huge breaths as I descend below the eyesight level of the bench. I’m trying to remind myself that this is my fault that he obviously didn’t want to tell me about the baby on the phone just as I didn’t, maybe he thought Arabella had and Arabella thought he had because I see her go a dark shade of crimson as I shake myself off and prepare to stand. Even not knowing what I’d been through, as someone who knows our history she knows this would be a shock. But she doesn’t know the half of it.  
I want to cry, I want to collapse on the floor.   
I can’t take this but I have to.   
I damned near won an academy award and right now I have to show why because somehow I pull myself together. Somehow I fight back..  
I school my looks, I pull myself together and I smile at him, I beam he looks unsure, for half a minute he seems to realise that this would be and is a huge shock for me and then he recovers and he beams back.   
“Junie!!”   
He’s Tigger again and he comes round to embrace me in a full hug. Alan has a protective arm back on my shoulders just in case I fall and Rima and Ed are hovering. David whispers in my ear – I’m so sorry Junie I was so sure you knew. That stabs, I can’t answer him and I can’t talk. I just hug him.   
He introduces us, Georgia and I, I hope I’m friendly and nice as she hugs me. Her bump comes between us and bumps into my empty tummy and I hiss in a big breath.   
She talks, I smile and nod like a demented cow and then someone else gets their attention and there is a scotch in my hand and a watery smile from Arabella.  
“I’m so sorry, I thought you knew,” she says looking lost and just a little horrified. I’m still a demented cow smiling like I had a grin painted on. The scotch goes pretty much in one rush of burning liquid down my throat, I don’t feel it. I don’t feel anything. I’m living my worst nightmare.  
I don’t know how I’m going to get through any speeches and dinner – I need to run. I look for Rima, I can’t find her. Alan has his hand glued to my back and he’s quietly repeating “you can do this, you can do this”.  
But there is facing your demons and then there’s this.  
My phone rings. I excuse myself from Arabella.  
“This is your mother speaking,” comes Rima’s voice. I should wonder where she is but I don’t have that many functioning brain cells.  
“There is an emergency at my place and Alan and Rima are to bring you to me now.”  
I try not to look demented cow but I answer “yes mum!” I’m aware there are other people in the kitchen other than Arabella but I couldn’t tell you who.   
“Are things okay?” I ask.  
“Yes okay, I’ll put Alan on.”   
And then Alan and Rima talk and less than a minute later we’re out of there with the Rickman’s making their apologies and swearing that everything is okay – just a little family drama.  
We leave Ed, he sees us and watches us go, nodding to Alan.  
The car makes it around the corner just as everything I’ve ever eaten decides to evacuate. My god father has reckoned on this and has stopped just in time for me to open the door and projectile into the gutter.   
So here we are, two of Britain’s best known actors and we’re on the side of the road in one of the more affluent suburbs on of London with me spewing in the gutter. Rima has her arms around me and I’m crying and vomiting in equal measure. I can’t stop either action, I can hardly breath.   
But Alan’s steady voice is reassuring, he’s ringing my mother and they are talking – I can hear her voice and Rima’s arms keep me from passing out. These people love me. I’m safe, I’m safe. I calm enough to get back in the back of the car. She sits with me and Alan drives. He heads towards my mother but I protest. All I want is to go home. All I want is home, all I want is my cocoon.  
And so they give up and Alan heads in the other direction.  
I’m a mess of snot and worse by the time we get home and Alan parks underneath. They wrangle me up the stairs but I’m numb now. They look lost trying to work out what to do with me to be honest and I’m no help.   
Alan makes tea while Rima sends me to the shower. She sits outside and talks to me while I slide down the wall and sit on the tiled floor, water flowing over me, around me, cascading over me, washing me away piece by piece. I feel like I’m dissolving down the drain. I suppose it’s the shock. It’s not David’s fault, I know that. I cut myself off. How were they to know. I sob into my knees, hold my tummy, run my hand over the scar on my lower abdomen and I mourn him all over again. I mourn my boy. The world has moved on and I can’t, not really, I’m locked, I see David and I’m locked, carried back, he really is a time lord for me a timelord who can’t change this event.  
I’m dissolving and lost until I hear a commotion outside my ensuite and the door opens. I don’t look, I don’t care, nothing matters, I’m back in that Auckland hospital. Georgia has everything and I have the scars of loving him and I can’t hate her or him or the little baby she carries.  
The glass door opens and a gentle hand goes around me. I look up to see blue eyes sad under strange black hair, a watery smile. He’s fully dressed and kneeling in my shower.   
My best friend.   
I don’t even question how he got there.   
He just is.  
“It’s okay I’m here now Junie!”   
He has tears in his eyes.   
He helps me up and gets me a towel. I don’t know how long I’ve been there. I think a few minutes but I’m crinkly so I don’t know. He’s dressed like he’s been out because he was going out wasn’t he?   
Tom wraps me in a towel and pulls me into his body. He’s wetter than me now.  
“My best friend,” I say, I’m calm now I can’t sob or feel anymore.  
“Forever,” he says, kissing my forehead.  
He dries me, picks me up and carries me to my bed. Someone has left PJs there and tea and a bucket.  
He settles me in and goes out. I hear low voices, I can’t make them out.  
I’m not on the planet.   
He comes back in his own PJs – he has a drawer in my spareroom – he and Gaia seem to vie for possession of that room and I’m glad of it now. Apparently Alan and Rima have gone home but will be back in the morning if i need them.   
Tom gets me to sip the tea – I think Alan put half my jar of sugar in it – its’ so sweet I’m sure I have diabetes just touching it to my lips. But he hugs me close. I eventually sleep. He curls around me and keeps me safe from the world again like it’s his purpose in life, I let him, right at this moment he’s all I need.


	25. The Moment of Truth

An insistent knock on my door and the buzz of the intercom wake me from my sleep. I feel the bed dip and the door open. There’s a buzz as someone is cleared and then let in and then soft voices again, a deep resonating very English one and a gently soothing Scottish lilt and I know who it is.   
I roll off my bed and grab a small box from the floor.  
The clock by my bed signals 11am, we’ve slept in but then we woke up a few times last night. I couldn’t sleep and I suppose neither could Tom. I hadn’t pulled him away from a date, he was having dinner with his sister and some of her friends. Ed called – I’d wondered if it was him or mum or even Alan. He’d just said I needed him. I tried not to think about him dropping everything for me. I suppose I’d done it for him when he discovered his American girl, the most recent love of his life - had been cheating on him. He found out the hard way with his own two eyes - witness to the act in her flat that he was sharing. Her careless coupling left him heartbroken and temporarily homeless. I’d been in Hollywood working and been able to come and pick him up and take him back to my place for a beer of two.   
But this was different. We talked about this last night. It was time.  
I hugged the little box to my chest and opened the door.  
He was standing near the door, just beyond Tom who was standing between my room and David like a watchdog looking out for threats. But David was no threat he was just heartbreak with browneyes.  
“Hi David,” I said quietly.  
I must have looked like shit – I knew I did because little mary sunshine Hiddleston looked like shit and he was usually prettier than me.  
Tom turned towards me and ran his hand through his hair.   
“Didn’t mean to wake you Juno,” he said. I rolled my eyes at him. “Yeah sorry babe I know you didn’t sleep,” he laughed nervously. This all felt so weird. To have David here to all be here together. Three players in a drama that one of us didn’t know had happened.  
David carried flowers of some non-descript nature and a box of what looked like fancy pastries, his usual MO – a piece offering obviously for shocking his friend and sometime lover with his news. It would have worked I suppose in normal circumstances. But these aren’t normal circumstances.  
Tom puts on the kettle, he knows me. He’s somehow changed into his track pants and joggers and says he’s going to run and then go home and shower. He’s doing nothing of the kind. He’s going downstairs to our favourite coffee house to wait and then scrape up the pieces.   
“Oh you two don’t live together?” David says casually as I get down the cups. I’m trying to keep this normal and natural and calm. Inside a storm has erupted.  
“Tom has his own house,” I reply just as casually.  
“But you two, you’re a couple,” he says like it’s a irrefutable fact.  
“No just friends, nothing more.”  
I’m waiting for the next statement.  
“But you’ve been, well you’ve.........”he starts before stopping and looking awkward, his hand goes through his hair. I try not to laugh at how much that reminds me of Tom and visa versa. If I had been just going on mannerisms to identify my boy’s father then I’d have been in the dark forever no matter how old he was.  
“Lovers?” I finish and he nods, a fetching shade of crimson staining his cheeks.  
“Not really – we’ve slept with each other twice, once about two years ago and about eight months after that but that’s all,” I say.  
He looks really embarrassed and quite surprised that I’m so precise. “I’m sorry it’s none of my business, I just always saw you as a couple.”  
I sigh. “Actually I think it is your business and I think it’s time we cleared the air,” I’m jumping in with both feet.  
“I need you to listen to me. We’ve had too many secrets and I don’t like it, I want my friend back.”  
“I want that too Junie – I’m so sorry about last night, I didn’t know how to tell you and then I thought you knew. Georgia was quite worried about you to be honest,” he says in a rush. He’s nervous. I have a jumbo jet doing laps in my stomach.  
I sigh and hand him his tea, hoping he still likes earl gray with a dash of milk, or is that Tom? He doesn’t say anything so I figure he’ll drink it or at least attempt to until this conversation ramps up. We head to the lounge to sit. His flowers are left on the bench but he holds out the pastry for dear life. I’m holding my little box, the little box that is all I have left of my little boy. David puts the pastries on the table between us and opens them. They are all his favourite - French Fancies plus two baked cheese cake pieces, my favourites. It’s a nice thought and reminds me of why we are friends, something I hope remains after this little chat.  
He sits on the lounge next to me and I place the box between us.  
He sips his tea but I’m too nervous. I want to throw up again.  
“David look I need to tell you something and I need you to just listen and let me finish the whole thing and not interrupt,” I say taking a big breath.  
He’s curious and worried and his eyebrow quirks. “What is it Junie? What am I missing?”  
“Please promise me? If you value my friendship, if you ever had feelings for me? Please??” I implore him, i’m hoping I’m giving him the big brown puppydog eyes.   
He nods looking worried and I lay it on him – the whole story, starting with Sophia’s call and Tom and I having hot angry hate sex. Okay not quite the angry hate sex but I tell him we were together when I got the call from Arabella about his mother. He nods then and says he saw a bite mark on my shoulder that could only be human and assumed it was Tom.   
“It only happened once and I didn’t know what it meant or what to do and I had no intention of sleeping with you after that,” I said.  
He put his hand on my knee.  
“I needed you! Junie you’re always there when I need you,” he says softly. I can’t handle the hand on my knee not for the next bit, I move it off and I put my finger over his lips.  
“Please?”  
I tell him I discovered I was pregnant after Wallander with no idea who the baby belonged to and how confused I was, how lost. I tell him about my mother going through IVF and how many times I wanted to tell both him and Tom. How in the end that was taken out of my hands, how I almost died and that my baby did. How I wanted him there but I didn’t want to have him destroyed like me and those around me. I didn’t want to watch him go through something like loss again so soon after his mother –five months after. Putting him through this and bringing the press down on him on all of us.   
I watch his face go from shock to anger to hurt and back to shock and sorrow. I watch it go through so many emotions and I plow on. To his credit he doesn’t talk. I don’t think he can. And then I finish and he rages, he’s hurt he’s confused. He keeps saying he had a right to know even if it wasn’t ultimately his, I’m his friend, he should have been there. What hurts me though is how he just assumes that he was Tom’s and how he calls my little boy “the baby”.  
“Lex,” I say quietly. The tears are streaming now. David is pacing and his hair is getting a work out.  
“What?” he asks stopping to face me.  
My voice is little.  
“His name was Lex,” my voice is breaking now.  
“You named your child after a fucking superman villian?” he says shaking his head.  
“No,” I whisper.  
His eyes go wide as I open the little box beside me and hand him the picture of the little boy covered in tubes. I hand him Tom’s DNA results.   
“He was Lex or James as soon as I knew he was a boy and then I met him and I knew, I didn’t need anyone to tell me, I knew who he was,” I’m still little voiced.  
He takes the picture and stares at it. Reads the DNA statement.   
He stares at the son he’ll never meet.  
“Lex McDonald Brannagh,” I say, it’s barely audible but he hears it.  
“You named him after my dad,” he says in a whisper staring at the picture and his tears stream as the realisation slams him.   
“You should have........” he starts but he’s gone now emotionally destroyed and grasping at straws. He’s back on the lounge, my arm is around him now  
“If he’d lived would you have, would I have met him?”  
I nod. “I named him for you, I wanted him in your life.”  
His mind is going twenty places at once.  
“Were you ever going to tell me?”   
“I didn’t want to hurt you, you’d had enough crap and you were moving on,” I say.  
“But he was mine – we could have tried again,” he counters angrily and yet not. He doesn’t know how to act or think, I know that. I take none of this to heart.   
“No he was ours and you had started again. You’d met Georgia and Tom was there for me and I still wasn’t sure what that meant for us,” I say gently “When I rang you to say hello you said you thought you’d met someone special and I was glad. You’re my friend and I love you but we were never going to be ready for this at the same time, I think the same about Tom and I and as much as I wished he’d lived, you’re in the right place now. You’re about to have a wonderful family – the one you always wanted. It’s just not with me and that’s okay because I’m getting there too,”  
I say it without my voice breaking. I don’t know if I believe it. Part of me wants the happy family with David, part of me can imagine Lexie, sitting on daddy’s knee. But part of me still sees him as a blue-eyed blonde with curly hair and a cheeky grin.  
“Junie I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry,” he says over and over and I take him in my arms and we cry for our lost little boy.  
And I hope i haven’t lost them both forever.


	26. Enlightment

I’m still sitting with David on the lounge when his phone goes off. He’s been gone for two hours and I could imagine if I was a pregnant hormonal woman and my partner had gone to visit an old friend and not checked in I’d be a little anxious.  
Fishing the phone, he looks at the screen. He doesn’t want to take it but I know he should.  
He’s still emotionally drained but she needs him.  
He’s not mine, not now.  
I don’t think he ever was.  
But I want him in my life.  
“Take it or at least text her,” I say and I point him towards the spare room. I want him to reassure her but I don’t want to hear it. I’m his friend I’m not a fucking saint.  
He answers and is the complete actor that he is – moving into the spare room. I know he won’t tell her now and I wonder if he will. Maybe after – I mean when is a good time for your fiancé to tell you that he was a dad for a tiny while to someone he will never meet, with someone he considers one of his best friends.  
My own phone is on the coffee table. I have my own partner in crime, but not in life, to call. Someone who will be waiting anxiously too.  
I dial and hear the noise as soon as he picks up and he picks up on one ring.  
“You okay?” he asks.  
“Wrung out but okay.”  
“Is he still there?”  
“Yep he’s talking to Georgia in the other room!”  
“Shit.”  
I laugh for the first time in a while.  
“Yep!”  
“I’ll come up when he’s gone if you like?” he asks.  
“Come up now,” I say making a decision.  
I put my phone back down and look at the pictures, Lex’s little baby “Brannagh” bracelet, the little beanie he wore. His scans. I reach down and touch the scar that is my lasting reminder of him just as David comes back into the room.  
He watches me curiously.  
“Ceasar scar,” I explain and he nods, shaking his phone at me “I’ll have to go home in a bit, people coming over,” he says.  
“Or I could ring back – I could stay, we could talk more?” he adds, his brown eyes are full of sympathy now and that’s worse than anger and hurt.  
“No you need to go home to your family,” I sigh as he sits down next to me.  
“Juno – I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I suppose I think part of me knew you didn’t know last night, part of me wanted to show you what you’d missed out on.”  
I nodded “I probably deserved that,” I said. He shook his head and put his arms around me.  
“No Junie, No you didn’t, I understand now,” he says kissing me on the forehead. It is nice and familiar and part of me wonders if I asked him to make love to me if he would. But that won’t be happening and is inappropriate now and precisely why I rang Tom. Like he always does, my knight in shining Armani (okay not at this point in our lives but later on) – my knight in shining Levis comes through the door. He has a key to mine and I have one to his. We could feed each other’s cats and water the plants if we had any of these things.  
David breaks away from me and looks towards Tom. Seemingly making a decision, he stands up and goes towards him (I fear bloodshed for a moment but it doesn’t eventuate). Instead David hugs him and Tom hugs him back – hard.  
“Thank you,” he says.  
“Thank you for being there for our Junie and for Lex.”  
I look over to the two men I’ve loved forever and who will probably never really be mine and they are crying in each other’s arms.  
“He was a little fighter – I would have been honoured if he was mine,” he says. I’m crying now. He’d never said that before. He’d been stoick and supportive but never really expressed that sort of emotion.  
David breaks away first, patting Tom on the back and heading for the door – he waves to me and half shakes Tom’s hand, “look after her for me” he says and he’s gone.  
I had wanted to know if he wanted any pictures or something though I’m loath to give anything up from my treasure box even to my baby’s daddy. But he’s gone before I can ask.  
But Tom comes back and sits next to me.  
“You okay Juno babe?” he asks slinging an arm around me in a way that says “mate from down the pub” rather than the English gentleman the outside sees.  
“Yeah Tom – I’m okay and I’m single and it’s Christmas and I need a drink.”  
We get shit-faced, because we can, because we are young and single and that’s what you do. We spend the afternoon watching all the television shows we’ve missed out on (well some of them) on boxed sets and we break out the Scotch and then the Indian takeaway from downstairs.  
Neelima makes a huge batch of my favourite Aloo Gobbi and an extra warm beef Vindaloo for Tom, samosas, flat bread, pappadums and onion bajism - the lot and gets her son to deliver this banquet so we don’t have to try and kill ourselves negotiating my stairs. And then of course she doesn’t charge us – it’s Christmas and we’ve spent enough money with her this year. Though in truth neither of us has been here much. Tom wants to hand over money but Paul won’t take it, it’s more than his life is worth to return to his mother with our money. Instead I fish out a bottle of champagne that was a gift from a studio and a couple of other things from my Oscar gift bag that I’d been meaning to take down to Neelima and he leaves happy.  
We spread this whole thing out on the floor, grab a picnic rug and watch the view out the window like we use to do before I had chairs, taking turns drunk ringing friends, Ed, Carey and Andrea all get a go before we decide we should drink a tonne of water and then of course we fall asleep together on the lounge watching Audrey Hepburn movies after Tom has decided that they should remake Roman Holiday or Breakfast Tiffany’s with him and I as the stars.  
At about two I wake and drag a half asleep man into my room and throw him on the bed................. where he promptly takes up most of it and falls back to sleep -arsehole that he is and leaves me to curl around him.  
I wake around 9.30am, surprisingly fresh (though I have a bit of a crick in my back after having my bed invaded by the mattress snatcher from hell). Drinking a shit-tonne of water apparently works. Unfortunately I’m feeling good but my flat isn’t looking it. In fact it’s looking a bit worse for wear and slightly hung over. There are containers on the floor, bottles glasses – DVD covers – shit everywhere. This wouldn’t worry me normally but well it’s Christmas Eve and stupid me decided that I should invite dad, mum, their partners and a god parent or three over for Christmas lunch. I’m an idiot.  
I sigh. I’m wearing a tight white T I grabbed yesterday quickly after David left and a lacy black thong. I couldn’t be bothered putting on my pjs and I haven’t had a chance to wash since I got back from LA so I’m down to my thongs for the next day or two until I get off my arse (which at least will be nicely flossed) and hit the laundry but it’s warm in my flat despite the winter chill outside and Tom’s safely asleep for at least another hour so I decide not to risk going back into my room and waking him up and I clean in my current ensemble.  
I’m still feeling emotionally wrought after yesterday but surprisingly lighter. Whether David decides to keep me in his life (which I think largely depends on Georgia) is out of my hands now. He knows, the truth is finally out there – and unfortunately so is the mess. I quietly set about tidying and cleaning my kitchen. It isn’t too bad considering. David’s Gerbras are in a vase on the bench and we’ve managed not to cause too much damage. A couple of half full food containers are stacked up in the fridge ready for later, but there are still a lot of empty containers on the floor in the loungeroom. I grab a plastic garbage bag and pick them up only to be wolfwhistled.  
“Do you always look like that when you’re cleaning,” Tom says from the bedroom door. I cast him a dirty look over my shoulder. He’s wearing his PJ bottoms and little else.  
“I thought you’d be dead to the world for at least another hour,” I sigh.  
“How’s the head?”  
“Yeah good,” he laughs.  
“And your’s?”  
“Tip top – that litre of water worked – see I told you Californians aren’t all flaky,” I add. It was my idea to drink the water after an American friend swore that it was perfect for containing hang-overs. She was right!!!  
I feel his eyes on me as I continue my work. It’s kind of nice, though I’m not really going to let on I’m enjoying the attention. We’re friends and although it’s been a little while and for the first time in a long while, a long long while, I’m feeling a bit tooey, it’s kind of not worth. I can’t go there again. Can I?  
“You could make your self useful and help,” I say and it pulls him out of his trance a little. I walk over and thrust the garbage bag into his arms and suggest he take out he take out the trash. The garbage chute is just across the landing so he doesn’t bother to throw on any extra clothes, grabs the bag I had and the other one from the kitchen and heads out.  
By the time he comes back I’m leaning across the coffee table with a washcloth, getting off the wine rings. Do I know the view I’m giving anyone at my front door? To be honest no, I’m just intent on cleaning up the place before my entire family descend on me.  
“Oh god fuck Juno,” I hear Tom say behind me.  
My shirt has risen up and I’ve exposed a fair bit of skin.  
“It’s not like you haven’t seen a naked woman before Tommy!” I laugh.  
“It’s not like I’ve had one for a while though Junie and you’ve always had a pretty spectacular body,” he sighs.  
I laugh, “flattery will get you nowhere!”  
I turn and see from his tight PJs that I might just have had more affect than I thought. I haven’t had a man in months either. Ed and I were active before I went away six months ago but we had ended it and he’d found other diversions. I’d been too busy. The sight of Tom standing there at the door, shirtless and excited was something to behold. And it kind of felt right. The last time we’d been intimate was the night after Ed asked me out and I’d admitted I was terrified to be with a man. Half a bottle of liquid courage later we’d popped my post operative/post natal cherry. And before that - well before that was Sweden. I felt like a new woman now and what better way to celebrate it then a bit of a sexy fumble with someone I trusted.  
“Well maybe not nowhere?” I teased running my hands up body and under my T shirt, touching my breasts. I heard him hiss in a deep breath.  
“You know your dad said now I was about to be famous I had to be careful where I found um love,” he said deep and seductively. I tried not to laugh. “I don’t think he meant you could fuck his daughter!”  
“Maybe not but he suggested I make sure I could trust any person I was with,” he said moving across the room towards me.  
I swallowed hard.  
We’re both single and both on our way to being too famous to pick up strangers. And if I’m honest, I find him sexy as fuck, particularly with that black hair.  
Happy Christmas to me.  
“Condoms are in the top drawer in my room,” I said huskily, “I’ll come help you find them if you like?” I’m still moving my hands under my shirt. I hope it looks sexy it probably doesn’t though it doesn’t matter because his eyes are preditorial.  
“Oh no Juno – you’re staying there, I’m taking you over that table,” he hisses.  
“Too low.”  
“The bench then,” he growls. He’s gone for seconds, well long enough for me to move across the room and lean on the bench, I’m releasing my inner slut, she hasn’t been around for a while but she’s back baby.  
He kisses me hard pushing me against the work top and pushing his body flush to mine. It’s heaven and pure sin all in one and I hook my leg around him and pull him flush to the place where I want him. He moans and it has the desired affect.  
“Are you sure?” he groans as I grind back against him.  
“Oh yeah babe,” I say slowly he laughs. “Don’t try to do sexy Junie it doesn’t work – you’re the biggest turn on when you don’t try.”  
He kisses me again and i run my hand down his body, down his back, down over his bum, I follow my hands and slide down, down until i’m on my knees and I’ve slid his PJs to the floor. He’s commando of course..  
“Mmmmm kneel before me mortal,” he says growling in a low threatening voice. Oh fuck I’m in trouble.  
“I’m not mortal god of mischief I’m Juno Goddess of Rome,” and I run my tongue up his staff making him groan out. I take him in my mouth until he can’t take anymore. Until he begs me to stop and rips my thong away, turns me round and comes good with his promise. I’m wet and slick and I’ve taken my top off letting my hard nipples slide along the cool marble. He’s taking me hard, we’re groaning and moaning and screaming to climax, I don’t realise the door was left open but a small noise makes me look and I turn to see, Georgia Moffat gasp and put her hand over mouth as she accidently witnesses me being screwed into my kitchen bench by my best friend.  
“Oh god I’m sorry,” she says not knowing where to look. “I’ll come back in 20 minutes.”  
She retreats for the door. “Better make it make it 30 I need 25 minutes to shower and dress,” I say.  
“Very funny,” he growls when our guest disappears. “You’ll pay for that quip.” And he finds the perfect way to pay me back.  
Half an hour later – on the dot (that punctuality must drive David mad). She’s back.  
I’m dressed now, the bench has been wiped down and my sex god is still in the shower.  
“I’m so so sorry,” she says thrusting muffins into my hand.  
“Thanks, I’ve worked up a bit of an appetite,” I giggle and she giggles with me. Tension breaks.  
I offer her tea and try not to look at her stomach, it’s the elephant in the room. We make small talk and I wonder if Tom is going pruney in the shower, he’s been there so long. By the time we’re sitting down to tea, Tom emerges declaring he’s due at his dad’s in a few hours. He kisses my forehead, says goodbye to Georgia and he’s gone like a flash, though I suspect I’ll see him later or tomorrow.  
“Nice boy!” she says as she watches him disappear out of the flat.  
“Mmm, nice arse too,” I deadpan.  
“Yep saw that too,” she laughs.  
“I’m sorry,” she says again. “I didn’t expect to find you, um.”  
I smile. “I don’t want him back and I didn’t want to hurt you or him, I just needed to let it out, I’m sorry it was now, it’s bad timing.”  
She has a gentle smile on her face, like she’s realised I’m no threat and we talk, I tell her about Lex and what happened and she tells me about how they met and how she feels. I expect her to be angry but she asks for my forgiveness for the night before. There’s nothing to forgive. She didn’t know and I didn’t know how to tell him. We talk and clear the air. It’s nothing like I expected my meeting with the girl that David finally settled on to be. We don’t braid each others hair and I don’t touch her tummy and we don’t cry over our shared experience. But we talk. And I think I might end up liking her one day. She says as much to me though it’s going to be a long road.<>


	27. Making Friends

Boxing day morning, I’m lying in Tom’s bed as he lazily sucks my nipple. He ended up at home at 2am in the morning coming in from his dad’s on his way to his mum’s tomorrow. He slid past my place on the way and talked me out of my nice warm bed and then out of my knickers and into his.  
He’s decided his place is less likely to be invaded, he’s just moved in and no-one much knows where he lives while mine can be a Tube station at times thanks to my family and friends.  
So until tomorrow he’s all mine and we’re finishing what we started on Christmas Eve, this time without the pregnant fiancé of my former lover.  
“So let me get this straight,” he annunciates as he kisses up my neck. “You think we should be each other’s stress release in times of great need.”  
He’s sucking my ear now and goosebumps are erupting up and down my leg. He runs his hand down to feel them and looks quite pleased with himself when he realises the affect he’s having on me.  
“Yessss,” I moan. “Not friends with benefits – just a safety valve.”  
“MMMM. I can live with that,” he says licking up and down my neck as his hands roam my body.  
“Mostly,” he says going back to my nipples. He loves my breasts. He’s a breast man, I’ve seen him around enough women to know that’s where his eyes go first. I’ve ribbed him about how obvious he is. And he’s always gone a fetching shade of vermillion and explained that it’s hard when you’re tall not to look down someone’s cleavage. But I laugh and tell him that as he becomes more famous he’ll have to watch that. And he will become more famous – I understand that more than him at this point in our lives. I have seen him act, his passion and I know without a doubt dad is going to give him the audience he needs to make him a huge star. And I know how much he’ll need his friends when that happens, I’m already feeling it. I don’t want to lose him as a friend which means this can’t be more than what it is – great sex with a great friend.  
However right now, naked in his lovely new king-sized bed, right now he can be as much of a breast man as he likes. And we can be as emotionally connected as we need – emotionally and physically connected.  
Mmm he covers his body with mine and I really want to be physically connected as soon as possible and from the feel of his cock on my hip, i’m not the only one.  
“Spread you legs,” he growls as his lips make it back to my ear. I’m happy to oblige, wrapping one of them around him and bringing the other up almost straight on to his shoulder putting my foot almost on the back of his head.  
“Oh fuck, you’re talented Juno,” he swears.  
“Thank god for dance lessons as a kid,” I groan as he pushes in again.  
“And thank god for your long hard cock,” I moan.  
“Who’s your favourite god now Junie?” he growls and I laugh, I can’t help it. What is it with these boys first David and his “master” quips and now Tom and his god of mischief.  
“Mmmm is being the god of mischief going to be your new line with the ladies Tommy?”  
“Is it working now Junie?” he grunts sliding home hard. “Is it?” His eyes are determined and blown wide and as sexy as fuck as he enters me and starts to fuck me hard.  
“Oh god yes,” I moan and it’s all he needs.  
In the cold December air in an empty partially heated bare canvas of a house, we lay there in the after glow sweating from exhaustion, pulsing from the intensity of the connection and I wish we could have more, I wish we could wake up like this every day. I know we can’t so I don’t voice these thoughts, instead it’s Tom who speaks. It’s Tom who tells me he’s so lucky to have me on this journey. He kisses me, I kiss him back and we lay there looking at each other like crazy people.  
“Wow we managed to have sex without anyone interrupting us,” I giggle, I’m laying on my tummy with my arms on his chest and he has a casual arm around me, the other flung up over his head.  
“I know right,” he says lazily, languidly in that way you do when you’re so relaxed, boneless and content after a good seeing to.  
“I keep replaying the look on Georgia’s face over and over in my mind,” I giggle.  
“Yes must have been very disconcerting to come to confront your partner’s former lover and find her being brilliantly serviced by a very well endowed man!” he deadpans, I lose it now in a fit of giggles.  
“You’re so full of yourself Hiddles,” I wheeze out as I laugh.  
“Mmm you don’t seem to complain when you’re full of me!”  
I tickle him then until we’re both as breathless from giggling as we were from the sex before it.  
“But seriously Junie I think her seeing you like that probably helped, I mean she’s got to know you’re still in love with him, the whole world knows that but you’re moving forward,” he says staring at me.  
I wonder, then how he sees me, us, me and David, him and I. I know he sees us as friends, I wonder then if he loves me because laying in his bed, in his arms I know he’s right about me loving David, I’m resigned to it. I always will but I wonder if he knows that I love him just as much. Looking back I don’t think he did. He’s so cock sure of himself on the surface, but underneath he’s so vulnerable, so lonely and insecure. I suppose we all are. And it’s these insecurities and the fierce determination to succeed in our careers that draw us to each other and make it impossible for us have a normal relationship.  
He asks me then how I feel about the David and Georgia situation. I tell him it hurts but it feels right too. David wanted different things and now he has them. I am still chasing success, personal satisfaction and a sense of self. I’m still trying to prove myself to myself and to the world. He hums in agreement, we’re on the same page. But it doesn’t mean we’re in the same place.  
After a day of great, stress relieving sex, we part. We see each other once more before we’re back into it. He has back to back projects starting with returning to play gods with dad and so do I.  
Over the next few years we whirl around the world getting more and more famous, slowly rising in our success levels. He becomes more famous than successful, I become more successful than famous if that makes sense.  
We drift in and out of each other’s lives, he has girl friends, I have boyfriends but we always have time to meet up for a quick drink or a meal and occasionally we find each other back like that boxing day, happily laughing in bed. I love making love to him, like I use to love making love to David but as with David it is ephemeral.  
Over the year’s David’s star rises too –in a different way though, while Tom becomes a “movie star” and I’m building up a body of work as an actor, writer and director. David becomes a doyen of the theatre scene in London and a national treasure on the British screens.  
I don’t see him again for a few months after I told him about Lex. I know he’s working through everything, trying to put our relationship back into some sort of working order. He’s had moments of rage and loss and anger, I know that because I did too, I just dealt with it two years earlier than him.  
In the end the next time I hear from him is when his daughter is born. He doesn’t want me to hear from other sources and I’m one of the first to know. He sounds so happy and it feels right and kills me in equal measure. He has what he wanted but it’s not with me. I mourn what could have been and I mourn my little boy our little boy. Tom rings me when he hears. We’re both in LA again, he’s between girls (I think) and he comes over to mine with a bottle of single malt and a sympathetic ear. He holds me and we remember Lex because as much as David provided the DNA it was Tom who went through that with me– he was there, he was as much part of that part of my life as David. I try to explain that to him was we lay naked wrapped around each other in my bed but I think he only hears David was his dad and switches out after that, or maybe he does hear. Maybe it’s the nature of our relationship.  
We’re there for each other, we have each other’s backs but when it comes to facing up to our own feelings. We can’t.  
We are both back in London at Christmas when David and Georgia get married – it’s a quiet service just the closet of family on both sides and me. Somehow talking on the phone with Georgia we’ve started to become close, I under stand what she’s going through with him, I don’t judge. How can I. I watch them marry and then I go back to my flat and there’s this man with an Indian curry, a blanket on the floor and a couple of bottles of champagne. The wedding was secret, the fact that I was there is even more secret. Only two people could have done this, could have told him.  
“How?”  
“Georgia, she thought you might need some company.”  
“You still have a key to my flat?”  
He laughs. “You aren’t getting back you know!  
“What does your girl friend think?”  
“Shhh!” he says standing up and coming over to me.  
“Stress release!” he says quietly.  
There is soft music and he wraps his arms around him and I cry into his shoulder until he picks me up and takes me to bed. We don’t talk about our partners, we both have them though they’re both in other countries at that moment, but this is something else.  
We don’t talk about this on the outside we have a normal friendship, people who know ups probably wouldn’t guess it goes beyond being best friends, that it is something more physical on occasion or maybe they do and they don’t say.  
We both go to David and Georgia’s wedding party the next day at the Globe and get uproarishly drunk and dance and promise we’ll all do Shakespeare together one day. I hug her as much as David – maybe more.  
“Thanks,” I say in a quiet moment with Georgia in the ladies.  
“You two really need to get it together,” she sighs.  
“We’re friends,” I sigh.  
“But Junie – he’s hung like a horse and I’ve seen him in action he isn’t bad, I mean he isn’t David.....” she says.  
I look scandalised and she laughs.  
“I’m glad he found you,” I laugh hugging her.  
“Thanks for letting me part of his life of yours.”  
She hugged me back like the friend she was becoming.  
“Just take care Junie – Tom’s wife might not be so understanding!”  
IN THE END “Wow that’s some story, I never knew – I mean I suspected something major had happened between West Wing and Madmen and I knew when you and Jane and I worked together in New Zealand that there was a special bond between you but – wow fuck Junie!” Elisabeth said as I finally finished my story.  
“I’m sorry I didn’t say anything – I didn’t really tell anyone, I mean I sat down with Dad and my grandmother though neither of them knew who Lex’s dad was. But well I just couldn’t, I still wonder – he would have been eight in a few weeks.” I say quietly.  
“Thanks for telling me – you know I won’t say anything.”  
I nod – this isn’t a story I would ever want out in the public. I am quite well liked these days by the media and critics but I’m well-known now. I trilogy of books and two academy award nominations and one award, a few Emmy’s and Baftas will do that. And of course I’m still Ken or Emma’s daughter. I doesn’t worry that much any more now. I’ve made peace with who I am and where I fit in, in the world. I could be the mother Lex needed now. I’ve certainly thought about it – finally doing it. I’m 35 in a few months and the clock is ticking. Not so much the need to be in one place but to have a significant other and a child or two.  
I sigh and Liz smiles at me quizzically.  
“But that’s not the end of the story is it?” she asks.  
“I mean you and Tom, and David for that matter.”  
I shake my head.  
“David and I don’t see a lot of each other but I drop in on Georgia when I’m home and I’m god mother to their newest baby weirdly,” I say smiling at the thought of David trying to ask me that question. We have a weird relationship, but then I think we always did. I almost feel like his sister now – the kids call me Aunty Junie – we’ve become closer recently – shared concern over two people really close to us who have terminal illnesses.  
“Yeah but you and Tom – I mean you spent more time in his room than yours in Northern Ireland for High Rise,” she said.  
“Over the years, we’ve just become comfortable being friends. I suppose me going to hang out in Northern Ireland and write with Amy Jump brought us to the same place for the first time for an extended period of time.”  
She nodded.  
“I mean I know you were pretty discreet but you looked good together.”  
I sighed sadly. “I kind of thought this time we might, you know, we might put it all together but he was off overseas again and so was I.  
“I wasn’t ready for David and now Tom isn’t ready for me. He met someone on the set of a movie last year just about the time I was going to suggest we cranked it up a notch, tried the real relationship thing. “ I ran my fingers through my hair.  
“Basically I decided I wanted the forever just as he decided he didn’t.” Liz looked at me with horror, rushing across the room to hug me.  
“I’m so sorry,” she gushed, “here am I pestering you to take it to the next level.........why didn’t you tell me?”  
I smiled gently at her, extricating myself from her embrace.  
“Because Tom and I are still friends and it’s all good,” I said and I meant it too, kind of.  
“Look he had said he wanted a break from casual, that he wanted a relationship and I said I wanted that too. However I meant him and I and he meant he’d met someone.”  
Liz looked at me sadly again, god I hate pity.  
“Does he know?” she asked.  
I shook my head.  
“And he doesn’t need to.”  
“Is he still seeing the other woman?” she asked tentatively.  
“We saw each other at Christmas when he was home and he didn’t say and I didn’t ask but we just hung out at the pub – no hanky panky.  
“As you said, I have a type. But obviously that type doesn’t work for me – I love him, hell part of me still loves David, but neither were meant to be so I’ve moved on – I’m seeing someone and he’s nothing like my usual type and it’s fun and exciting and new,” I added, hoping she’d believe it and trying to convince myself it was true. It was true.  
“Harry’s great, he’s not in the industry, he doesn’t know much about Shakespeare but he’s smart and funny and I think he’s the one,” I said my eyes shining and she looked at me shocked.  
“Oh my god why didn’t you tell me that first,” she said punching me gently in the arm before hugging me again.  
And then I was barraged with a hundred questions, how did we meet, what did he do, when could she meet him?  
I laughed and explained he was a backer for dad’s show, a developer, he was in his early 30s, worked hard but wasn’t taking off all over the world like an actor and he treated me well and by the time I’d finished all that and we looked at the clock, it was 9pm and we both had early starts really early starts.  
“Thanks for telling me.... about David and Tom and Lex,” she said embracing me after I’d walked her down to catch her cab.  
“It was an interesting chapter of my life,” I said and I meant it. “Just don’t tell David I told you everything especially not what he’s like in bed,” I laughed trying to break the tension.  
“Let’s hope he doesn’t have to say the word master or I’ll lose it,” she laughed.  
I laughed too.  
“You be nice, he’s still one of my best friends,” I said hugging her again.  
“I will I promise, goodnight Junie I’m glad it is all working out for you!” she said getting in the cab.  
I watched her drive away and I let out a deep breath.  
It was working out...........finally.


	28. Facing the Truth

And then my world fell apart again just a few days later.  
“Alan Rickman died peacefully surrounded by his friends and family.”  
That’s what the media said and it’s what happened, I was there. I should have been at the Garrick Theatre with my dad working on our show. But he knew where I needed to be and he wasn’t the parent who needed me most at that moment. I was directing this one of our series of shows – directing my dad. He understood – he insisted.   
My mother and other friends issued statements and did interviews but I, I couldn’t. I clung to Rima – dad let me have a couple of days off. But then only a couple – Alan wouldn’t have approved any more than that – the show goes on. But they were my other set of parents and I felt like I’d run the gamit of emotions now. I’d lost a child and a parent. I’d probably lost a partner or two as well but at least they were still alive. Just not in my life the way they could have been if I let them.  
But they were still there in some capacity and in the hours and days after we lost my godfather I heard from both David and Tom. Tom had offered to come home from Australia to be with me but I couldn’t do that to him, he had his career and whoever it was that was sharing his bed at the moment and I had Harry.   
Not that I saw much of Harry. Our relationship was young and I suppose he didn’t know the significance of what I’d lost.   
David rang though, to support me and to tell me about his new daughter and update me on his dad – he’d be next, it was inevitable and wouldn’t be long now.   
I felt like the generations were shifting and we were moving into the adults chairs now. A lot of my friends had children, Carey had not long given birth and Andrea was getting married and Benedict had done both (well Sophie his wife had given birth but you know what I mean) even Ben was married. There weren’t many of us without some sort of connection.  
The past was falling away but the future wasn’t rising up to take it’s place in my case.  
I had achieved the things I wanted and it had cost me a lot – yeah I had other things to achieve but I felt like I was treading water.  
Georgia invited me to dinner and in the end I decided that I’d come but I’d cook for her. It was actually nice to be immersed in family life, to look to a future, even if it wasn’t mine, not to what I’d lost or given up.   
It made me even more acutely aware of what I didn’t have and what I wanted. I had an academy award but it wasn’t keeping me warm at night and it didn’t love me unconditionally.   
I wanted this..............I wanted the messy craziness of what David and Georgia had. I’d long since forgiven David for moving on, I knew it was as much my fault as his that we never worked and I genuinely liked Georgia, she was no-nonsense and fun and straight to the point. She fed the baby as I cooked with her oldest two (one was more of a hindrance than a help but I was relishing it – relished being Aunty Junie on a night off from the theatre). David was busy bathing his younger son and out of earshot – well I hoped so as we talked about life. I was a natural at cooking with kids according to Georgia and she didn’t miss the sigh that passed my lips when she said it and pressed me on it. And finally I admitted it, to myself and someone else that I wanted this. That I finally got it, got the appeal, understood that life was more than just work.   
“So are you going to tell Tom,” she asked.  
“I’ve moved on I’m with Harry now.”  
“You should still tell Tom,” she said moving baby Scarlett from one breast to the other.   
“Tom is married to his career.”  
“But you love him,” she said matter-of-factly.  
“No, we’re friends, like David and I – anything else doesn’t work.”  
It was my mantra these days, said to my mother, Rima and anyone else who had asked.   
“And if the room weren’t full of my kids I’d tell you what I think of that statement.”  
And her teenager laughed before heading off to help look after the others while we got on with dinner.  
“You really should just get Tom to knock you up,” Georgia laughs and then covers her face in horror.  
“What because I’ve got form?” I say laughing it off.  
“Oh Junie I’m so sorry, I,” she stammers.  
“He’d have been eight about now,” I say sadly  
“You’d probably have a tribe behind him,” Georgia laughed trying to keep things on the up.  
“Like you?”  
She rolls her eyes.  
“No with blond curls and blue eyes.”  
I roll my eyes back at her.  
“Nah David was always headed your way,” I say ignoring her implication. “Having Lex would have given Olive another brother to boss around.”  
Georgia smiles at me sadly, it’s one of those deep smiles born of friendship and shared pain. It’s a smile I could imagine sharing with Gaia if she was older, as she gets older. I wondered when Georgia had adopted me too?  
“I want to tell them about Lex – when they’re older if that’s okay?’   
I look at her, like she’s gone mad. It’s a sweet gesture but wouldn’t it cause more confusion for them? I say as much and she shakes her head. “He was their brother and he was real and he lived – he shouldn’t be a secret not to his family!” she says and I hug her, tight.  
I remember when David lost his mother, I remember how lost he was and Lex was the good that came out. He was just too good I suppose.   
I don’t want to think about another baby and yet, I finally feel ready and not just for kids, for a house, maybe not the same one all year but I want someone to wake up with, to share my life with.  
But I know it won’t be with Tom. We’ve moved on past that.  
“I’m with Harry and he has someone, our time is past if we ever really had a time, we were never in Love as much as we loved each other,” I repeat again and even I don’t believe it this time.  
If I was honest I actually wasn’t seeing that much of Harry but we talked on the phone and made plans for holidays. Work was all consuming and so was grief. And I didn’t have Tom to ring- timezones and work loads made it too hard and I missed him, but it didn’t matter it was time for us to cut the cord and move on. So I didn’t even try to make the time. Harry was my future – if I said it enough I’d believe it.  
After David and Georgia’s I went home to my empty flat and then back to my work the next day and back to making sure my dad’s shows were the best they could be. My dad’s reputation had been on the line with this return to having his own company and I wasn’t going to be the one to stuff it up.  
And I didn’t and he didn’t and suddenly after months of hard work it was over and there we were sitting on the front of the stage of the Garrick dangling our legs over the edge of the stage contemplating the final night’s performance.  
“So what now?” he asked me hugging me close with one arm. It was nice to be daddy’s girl again even though I was now in my mid 30s.   
“Well Harry wanted me to go the Bahamas with him but I’ve been offered this amazing script for a movie, it’s here in the UK so I’d still be around and another actress dropped out at the last minute so I only have a few days to decide. I’d start filming pretty soon after that, not a lot of time for prep work but I already know the story, it’s from a book I’ve loved forever,” I said snuggling my head on to his shoulder.  
“But maybe I need a break after this,” I finished. I was exhausted but this was a good opportunity.  
“What do you think?” I asked yawning.  
Dad looked at me kindly.  
“You have to follow your heart,” he said squeezing me tight.  
“You can have a holiday anytime but you seem enthusiastic about this project – I’ll read the script if you’d like?” he asked. I nod, a little surprised, he hadn’t done that in years – usually I ended up discussing my roles with mum or Alan, maybe it was his way of stepping up to the plate again, of becoming a whole dad and not letting Alan and Greg share. We’d had a fairly distant relationship there for a little while mainly because of work taking us different places and my secret but after the past eight months we were closer than ever.   
Still it was a surprise for him to support this new project because I was established now I didn’t have to take every opportunity I was given and he’d given me that lecture a few months ago – urging me to make sure I made time for life and now he was kind of going back on it.   
Did he not want me to spend time with Harry? He knew we were together and had never commented. I tested the waters.  
“So did Harry tell you he’d been called away with work again, he won’t make tonight’s party,” I said casually changing the subject.  
“Oh well!” he said getting up and offering me a hand up. Quiet time was obviously over and we were back to work.   
“There’ll be plenty of people to help us celebrate,” he said.  
I looked at him and frowned.  
“Do you like Harry?” I asked.  
He smiled, “Of course I do – I couldn’t have done this without backers like him.”  
I gave him a rueful smile.  
“You know what I mean,” I said shaking my head.  
He had moved up stage but he came back and kissed me on the forehead.  
“You can see who ever you like, you’re a big girl now!” he smiled gently.  
“But?” I continued not letting him off the hook.  
“But he’s not Tom is he?” he said seriously and my mouth dropped open.  
“Oh miss clever clogs hadn’t worked out that dear old dad knew about her and young Mr Hiddleston or Mr Tennant either I would think,” he said teasing me.  
“I don’t miss as much as I think I do my little goddess!” he giggled before turning serious.  
“Lex didn’t come out of nowhere sweetie. I know I’ve never asked but I know David or Tom was his dad.”  
I hug him tight.  
“David,” I whisper.  
He nods and I figure he probably guessed.   
“But I think you wish he was Tom’s, I think you’ve always loved that boy,” he said with sad brown eyes.  
“I just wish Lex was here,” I say sadly back.   
“But it wouldn’t matter if he was and if he had been Tom’s like I wanted, I don’t think two actors can ever work together.”  
He swung an arm around me and smiled.  
“It’s a hard road but some of us make it – look at your mother and Greg,” he laughed.  
“Yeah but my mother is a force of nature she wasn’t about to let another marriage fail!” I giggled.  
Dad smiled and his eyes twinkled.  
“True, true and Greg’s a saint, but there’s a lot of Emma in you Juno and that’s not a bad thing,” he sighed “Though if you tell anyone I said that I will deny it!”  
I giggled, he made out to the wider world that there was no love lost between him and mum but I knew they still respected each other. That’s why I was relatively well adjusted.  
“Don’t worry your secret’s safe with me,” I said wrapping my arms around him and hugging him.  
Harry didn’t make the party and in fact I didn’t see him again before I left for this movie, I hadn’t seen him in weeks which made a mockery of the fact that I’d taken the step and taken myself off the pill in preparation to start a family not that we’d even had that discussion.   
I’d decided to take Georgia’s advice – well with a variation on the theme. Harry not Tom.  
We’re filming in Scotland and anyone who has ever filmed outdoors in Scotland knows that you have to take any moment you can because the sun is a bit of a fleeting and rare commodity so when that invite came I knew it would be iffy that I could make it.  
I’d been invited to the “Shakespeare’s Britain” awards and celebration in London and Stratford. It marked the 400th anniversary of William Shakespeare’s death and all of the best-known Shakespearian actors had been invited. It was a who’s who of British theatre, who was I kidding for me it was a reunion of my family and friends.   
But I was stuck in Scotland for the actual festival and would miss most of the final day. April in Scotland was unpredictable at the best of times but the weather was being downright temperamental this year and so we were behind where we needed to be. Still the director had allowed me time to fly down for the awards stay overnight and come back tomorrow afternoon. I had the ticket but I still wasn’t sure it was worth it. I mean yes I wanted to see my grandmother and parents and friends but..............  
Okay did I want to be in the same place as Tom. He was my past. He had to be, otherwise I wouldn’t move on .  
And being there with Dad, Tom and David felt a bit weird.  
So I’d pretty much given up on going when the call came, okay I’d flown down and was at my flat with the dress in front of me but I didn’t know if I could go through with it.  
“Hello June, it’s me,” came a very familiar Scottish accent.  
“Please tell me you’re coming tonight?”  
“I um I,” I stammered.  
“You were going to chicken out weren’t you?” he said.  
“I, well I thought, I thought it might be awkward,” I said in a rush of words.   
He laughed at that.  
'Awkward? Oh love, I think we're well past awkward.”  
“I had a visit from Tom a little while ago, I know he’d love to see you, We both would. So you’ll be there tonight right?”   
I sighed.  
I’d never been able to deny that man anything.  
“Sure David I wouldn’t miss it for anything!” I said taking my red dress down off it’s hanger.


	29. Much Ado............

I got there late. I hadn’t meant to. It wasn’t one of those attention-seeking all eyes turn to Juno Brannagh moments. That’s not really me,  
No this was a Juno took too long in the shower procrastinating and then couldn’t get a taxi and almost said fuck-it and stayed home moment.  
So I was late.  
And all eyes did turn.  
Maybe it was the dress, it was pretty hard to miss.  
I’d considered something black and sensible. I was still mourning my godfather, I missed him every day. I’d tried to convince Rima to come with me but she’d been unsure she could face a room full of actors so soon after losing Alan. I’d understood though it would have been nice to have her here. Instead she’d been dragged away by family for a week in the Cotswolds.  
And here I was.   
Dateless.  
For some reason I’d never even considered asking Harry, this wasn’t his world, not really and yet, despite my eye-catching apparel and late appearance, this was where I felt most comfortable. Usually.  
My friends and family where here.   
I mean I still had dad, mum, Andrea and the unsinkable Phyllida Law – grand mother supreme – but I’d miss Alan and Rima’s wit and unflinching support.   
They were here in spirit though – Rima had gone shopping for me.   
I didn’t have time and we had often shopped together so she had asked if she could do this for me, said she needed a project and I’d given in. However I had expected her to follow my brief (yeah I do have a university degree in the classics what of it?) and so when I opened the dress bag she’d left for me in my flat I found a nice black dress, sensible shoes and sensible support garments.  
Nope.  
I found eight-inch red heels, seamless red knickers and bra (silk from one of those well-known shops) and the slinkest, most sparkly red dress imaginable. I’d been looking for sensible and Rima had delivered sex. It hugged every curve like a Porsche, thin straps led down to a sweetheart neckline that directed your eyes right to the point or in this case both points. It was long – to the floor even with my heels and dropped elegantly from my hips so that it whispered softly around my legs and didn’t cling. A long split to my thigh made it even easier to walk in. It was beautiful and fit like a second skin (and it was lucky I hadn’t put any weight on as you’d see any bulge perfectly in all it’s shimmering glory – like a “look here boys and girls Juno ate a donut”).  
I had piled my hair up messily and kept my make up fresh and light other than the red lips – why fight it.  
And so here I was. Late and shimmery AND the room stopped and looked – oh god. Every eye was on me. Yes I’m an actress and yes I’m use to this and yes I’ve won an Oscar, but this is from my real peers, my family and I’m dressed like one of santa’s elves from the red-light district.  
I scanned for my table – the awards doubled as a dinner (not dangerous giving actors alcohol and microphones then), I’m kind of hoping for alphabetical order or a mixed bag. These were the great actors, directors etc of the Shakespeare world. It felt like a big crazy family reunion – 15 big round tables spread across what was usually a ballroom floor.   
Over in the corner I could see Andrea, fresh from As You Like It, chatting with Simon Russell Beale, Greg Doran was holding court with Dame Judy Dench in the middle and Ben Wishaw was in an animated discussion with Josie Rourke. I could sit at any of those tables and be more than happy. In fact I think I spy a nice empty place next to Ben. I haven’t seen him for ages and I miss him, he wouldn’t mind. But we pass by with little more than a chance of a quick wave.   
I’m being escorted to my table and from the direction we are heading I’m being escorted to three - oh god I’m at the front near the middle. This can’t be good, I haven’t spotted my parents or grandmother or even David and Tom and I’m beginning to worry.   
Starters are already being rolled out and champagne glasses are being clinked, though all I can think of is sitting down on a table where no one knows me and slinking down low, with a champagne – a lot of champagne. Right now I’m hating David a lot for talking me into this. And I’m hating myself too - I’ve known him 15 plus years and he can still talk me into doing idiotic stuff, like a love-sick teen.   
I follow my guide and there they are – the whole shebang sitting right in front of me and of course we’re boy girl (shit) my mother is straight across from me in an animated conversation with my stepfather , grandmother and Derek Jacobi who seems to be her date for the evening, my father and my step mother are next, Benedict Cumberbatch, his wife and parents make up the rest of the party, other than David, Tom and what appears to be Tom’s very young and very good looking nubile young date, he’s being very attentive and not even looking in my direction. He’ll have to soon because the only empty seat on the table is between him and David. I sigh. This is going to be a long night.  
David stands and kisses my cheek when I arrive.   
“Oh my god Juno look at you!” he gushes. “That is some dress.”  
“Rima picked it out – I feel like I mugged a hooker in Santa’s Red light district!”   
David laughs and assures me that I look lovely.   
I feel a presence behind me, a warmth on the back of my neck like someone is standing impossibly close and my breath catches because unless someone snuck in late. This could only be one person.  
“You look sensational darling,’ he says in my ear. I catch my breath again and turn.  
Tom has stood up and I’m suddenly caught in a man-sandwich – the story of my life for the past decade or so. I smile at David, he’s wearing a tux and has a little stubble, he looks elegant and handsome in equal measure. I don’t want to look at Tom, I can already smell that distinctive Tomness an intoxicating mix of his favourite cologne and his own muskyness a slight tinge of old books and Neelima’s vindaloo.   
I’m with Harry and he has a new plaything. We are just friends now. We are just friends now and anyway who comes to a dinner like this after consuming a curry.  
“Hiddles it’s a dinner did you have to stop for vindaloo?” I ask turning to him and trying to break the tension building in my body. I haven’t seen him since Christmas and it’s April now and I haven’t been with him for 18 months. We don’t do the friends with benefits now, we are friends, dwindling down to acquaintances for my own sanity. I need to move on (I’ve said that already haven’t I?) I’m not looking at how tight his tux trousers are or how his shirt is it’s usual one size too small and the buttons are stretched to popping point, his tie isn’t quite straight. To be honest he’s so close I can hardly move. I’m almost pressed to him.  
Instinctively I reach up and adjust his tie all the while shaking my head at him.  
He reaches over and kisses my cheek. I think it’s on instinct too. His lips are as soft and gentle as ever and fire erupts underneath them. God I’m easy where this man is concerned.   
Except I can’t be.  
“What would I do without you Juno,” he says. It’s a low and slow voice. The one he has used over the years when we’re in compromising positions, something in me stirs again and I immediately try to tamp it down. I blush and so does he, like we are both working from habit and as soon as we realise what we’ve done we back away. He brought a date. David said he wanted to see me but he has a date.   
I have a boyfriend.  
I’m happy.   
A boyfriend I haven’t actually seen in two months.  
A boyfriend that has never ever made me feel like this.   
Irrationally I look around for Georgia, for a little moral support and sigh when I realise that she’s not here.  
“You didn’t bring your better half?” I ask turning reluctantly back to David. He laughs. “We have four kids and a cockapoo Juno it’s lucky Georgia ever leaves the house – you’ve met them – Georgia’s mum’s away and I don’t know anyone else brave enough to take them on.”  
I smile warmly, “I’d have done it – I love your kids!” he takes my hand and squeezes it. It’s Lex’s birthday well his original due date –the other reason I didn’t want to be near these guys tonight.  
“You’re needed here Miss Juno!”  
I hear my dad groan.   
“Junie sit down you’re making the place look untidy!” and I see my mother roll her eyes at him in that “she get’s that from you look” that she give him whenever I’m in their combined presence. I suddenly feel better, if not still little awkward to be so close to Tom.  
“Yes, sit, sit, they won’t serve us if you don’t,” my mother fusses anyway, not really wanting to agree with my father.   
We all share pleasantries and I field embarrassing questions from my parents (all four of them) as I’m introduced to the members of our party I don’t know, don’t consider friends or family or haven’t slept with. That leaves Wanda and Timothy- Ben’s parents and Brooke – Sophie’s young wannabe actress cousin – who took David’s spare ticket.  
I’m relieved and yet not. He was still flirting but well, she has a pulse – he’s going to do that and it’s not if I don’t have form.   
And a boyfriend.  
So I’m technically Tom’s date for the evening. Mmm except I’m certainly not.   
He’s looking everywhere but me and I’m fine with that. It makes the whole “I will not let him charm my thin red silk incredibly comfortable knickers of me!” plan a lot easier.  
And a lot harder. We have never felt awkward in each other’s presence but here we are. Avoiding eye contact for dear life. I feel sad that we’ve got to this. He’s my best friend. I just have to stay away from him for a bit longer. It wasn’t like this at Christmas and I wonder where it went wrong. Georgia’s words about Tom’s wife not being as understanding as her come back to haunt me and heart squeezes tight.   
I turn my attention to the food, that has now arrived and to the rest of the table and wish for this night to end. To help me along I have a champagne or two. My mother’s eyebrow raises disapprovingly. Tom looks at my plate and his and without asking, he swaps, he knows I’m not a big fan of chicken and a big fan of steak. I go to thank him but he’s back to flirting with the foetus and I’m so confused by the mixed signals that I want to scream, or leave or both.  
I take another sip of my alcohol and ask David about Dr Laing he laughs and tries to bring Tom into the conversation. They joke about both being Dr Laing and having Liz at their side about having a lot in common. I flinch and Tom is back to red again. Most of the table gets the joke except the foetus who asks.  
I need some air.  
I excuse myself and both Sophie and my mother offer to come with me but I need the little girls room now. I need a break. I may not come back – which is why everyone is keen to make sure I’m accompanied. I insist it’s all fine and high tail it as fast as seven inch heels will allow me..  
The ladies room is at the start of a long corridor of the theatre/ballroom. It’s a theatre I know well – we performed here several times while at RADA. There is a handy back way out that I intend to use to escape this farce. But first, well I really need to pee.   
I come out and throw a little water on my face and head to the door.  
The problem with having great mates is that they know you better than you know your self and I bustle out just in time to have my arm caught by a very determined looking Scotsman.  
“Oh no you don’t!” he says and steers me down by the arm to the small store room which he unlocks with the key (where the hell did he get that?). He pushes me unceremoniously into the small room and locks the door before I can say anything.   
I’m still too shocked less than a minute later when the door opens again and David unceremoniously shoves Tom in too.  
“I know you both have phones, ring me when you’ve sorted this rubbish out,” he huffs.  
“For two people with swanky degrees you’re pretty thick sometimes!” he says through the keyhole.  
“Tom has loved you since RADA and I think you;ve loved him just as long. We both know he’s the real reason you could never commit to me. And Juno - Tom told me this afternoon in my hotel room that it was always me for you but get him to ask how you imagined Lex looking before he was born!”  
He says all this loudly through the door and I just hope that no-one else is around. Now you’d think   
“Now sort this all out and you can both come back out and play nicely!!”  
We hear his foot steps move away down the hall.  
We’re both too dumbfounded. I mean we should ring my mother or bang on the door but we’re just staring at each other.   
“Fuck!” Tom says running his hand through his hair. It’s longish at the moment and back towards it’s natural blonde. It invites fingers at this length. But they can’t be mine.  
“Fuck indeed!” I say.  
And we both burst out laughing.  
“I think he meant business,” Tom says when we regain our composure.   
“Yep!”  
I’m a woman of few words in this situation. I’m still too flabbergasted to have had this happen to me. To us. To have David gang up on us like this. It’s just weird, madness.   
“Your boyfriend isn’t going to be happy about this,” Tom sighs narrowing his eyes at me.  
I laugh. “He’s in New York and if I’m not mistaken he’s shagging his secretary.”  
Tom looked startled at this admission. I suppose I was too. I hadn’t voiced it before but in the back of my head I’d kind of always known that Harry had a wandering eye. Maybe that’s why I picked him. Maybe I thought I needed my heart broken. Stupid thing was, it already had been by the man who was currently locked in a cupboard just two by three metres. So close and yet so far.  
“Oh Junie I’m sorry, your mum told me you two were contemplating getting married,” he says sadly  
I sigh and know he is but I don’t want his pity.  
“I think it was just me that wanted a future– Georgia suggested I just get knocked up!” I laugh not adding who she thought should do the knocking.   
Being so close to him is hell and David is going to die a slow and painful death.  
“And it’s okay, I think I was just feeling lonely but hey at least you seem to have been with the same woman for 18 months if the press rumours are correct,” I smile, my best false smile.  
He chuckles nervously, fingers through curls again.  
“See the thing about that is well – she’s a friend and well we both needed a friend – her to get out of a relationship she didn’t want to be in and me to try and get past you,” he says quietly. His hand reaching up to touch my cheek.  
“Me?”  
He sighs and nods.   
“Ireland was so lovely but I knew, I thought, well,” he looks awkward but I nod for him to go on. “I thought you’d always see me and see David or see me as the consolation prize and I couldn’t do that anymore I couldn’t be the one you turned to when he broke you.Or maybe after all these years of running from relationships I realised why and who was really stopping me. That work was just an excuse.”  
He’s still touching my face delicately, reverently. He’s still just there so I lean in and..................  
I kiss him and kiss him and kiss him.   
We come up for air and I kiss him again.  
“When I was pregnant with Lex I kept dreaming of a little boy with blue eyes and golden curls,” I say quietly, my hands still on his face, my lips still close to his and I’m looking straight into those sparkling blue eyes.   
“I thought it meant he’d be yours and it’s all I wanted. David was a crush but you Tommy, you,” I sigh. There are tears in my eyes. I don’t do this emotional shit but here I am. I’m locked in a cupboard with a man who I’ve loved forever and I’m terrified.  
“Fuck Juno how long do you think we’ve been in love?” he says as he moves me back against the door.  
“Too long?”   
He giggles.  
“I’ll give you too long Juno Brannagh. Too long is how long it’s been since I fucked you, too long is how long it’s been since I talked to you and saw you and held you,” he whispered against my lips, his whole body pushed against mine.  
I feel that this is now going in another direction, an erection direction if you’ll excuse the pun and I don’t care but.........as I he grinds against me and I moan. I remember and I come to my senses.  
“I’m off the pill darling and unless you’ve got a condom on you this will have to wait until later,” I giggle.  
“See here’s the thing,” he says putting his hands on either side of my head and pushing closer.   
“I don’t want to wait any longer, not with you in that dress,” he growls and my eyes flare with surprise, “how long since you and Harry...........”he quirks his eyebrows.  
“Mmmmm three months and two periods ago,” I smile catching his drift.  
“Then it would definitely be mine, you’d be mine, I like that idea.”   
And with that his lips attack my mouth again, his tongue enters into the fray and I’m drowning in him, overwhelmed by what he’s suggesting, it’s what I want and yet we’re moving too fast, suddenly my whole life seems to have come off pause and it’s freaking me out.  
“Do you think it’s wise?” I moan.  
“Nope Junie but it’s time to take a risk!”  
I don’t know if his trousers or my knickers hit the ground first.  
Twenty minutes later my phone rings and Tom fishes it out of my bag which is on the floor next to us. We’re just staring into each others eyes like idiots wondering what we’ve done and not really caring.  
“Hello?” I sigh.  
“The awards are about to start and your parents are wondering where you are and what you’re doing,” David says quietly. I can’t hear any noise behind him and I think he might be out in the corridor though a whole battalion of dalek could have rolled up the hall and I wouldn’t have cared.  
“Do you want to come out yet?” he asks,  
“Nup,” I say and Tom laughs. “But we should!” he adds over my shoulder.  
I’ve tidied up a little when I re-enter the room on David and Tom’s arms – David looking more cat that got the cream than Tom even.  
“Well that worked out better than I expected,” he said.  
Fin


	30. Epilogue - Merchants and Doctors

Merchants and Doctors – epilogue.  
THE red carpet was buzzing. Photographers and journalists lined up, trying to get the best angle, the best picture. It didn’t faze Elizabeth Moss these days, it wasn’t her favourite part of the job but it wasn’t the worst thing she could do.  
It was, however, a lot harder work than most people thought. You had to stay on message and keep smiling no matter how many pictures were taken and how inane the questions. You had to stay in control of the situation, despite the whole thing feeling like a runaway train like a beast with a million heads all wanting you to look their way, smile this way and answer that question for the 10th time in a minute – the same question.  
She use to find it intimidating. She probably still did. Though she preferred indie movies to the big budget ones and so the situation didn’t get quite so out of the control, the crowds not quite so big. And of course it was a shared experience, not with her husband who was back in the US this time with their daughters, but with her co-star.   
David Tennant was the consummate professional, no more comfortable with the lime-light than she but you wouldn’t know it. He was poise and grace on a red carpet. The only other man she’d ever seen who looked more comfortable on the red carpet and yet internally felt over-whelmed was Tom Hiddleston. They were two peas in a pod. It was little wonder then that both men, over the course of the past decade and a bit, had been in love with the same woman. A woman who was now best friend to one and wife to the other and working on a play with both..  
David, placed a reassuring hand on Elizabeth’s back.  
“Are you ready to keep moving,” he whispered, being rewarded by a nod.  
He looked tired, he was tired, long days of rehearsing for the Merchant of Venice and promoting this movie, a movie about Dr Laing, 70s icon. It was called Mad to Be Normal and he kind of felt that way today. He was mad to do this job and try to have a normal life. Mad but strangely content.  
His normal was up early to help his wife get the kids to school, then off to the rehearsal space to work on the play and fit in any promotional stuff he had to do around all that. Sir Ken was a generous director but an exacting one and the fact that Ken was also playing Shylock meant he was under a lot of pressure to get it all right and expected a lot from his actors. It helped that his daughter and son-in-law were in the cast along with Carey Mulligan, an old friend of both (and former girlfriend of Tom). In fact the production had a family feel to it and the fact that all four of the leads had young children and movie careers meant at least they all understood what he was going through. Though at least David’s youngest was two now and almost out of nappies, he didn’t envy Tom and Juno having an eight-month-old to wrangle as well as busy careers. Both had slowed down a lot since the birth of Caius David Hiddleston a year after his godfather had locked his parents in a closet and told them to work things out. They had, better than David or his wife Georgia had expected. Juno was concentrating on her writing and directing now so she could spend as much time with her husband of six months and their son, a happy little boy with big blue eyes and blonde curls.  
Yes he had done good.  
He owed Juno that much, he probably hadn’t give their own relationship enough of a chance but then it had worked out okay for both of them, all of them.   
He and Elizabeth continued to walk the carpet, finally the theatre it’s self was in sight. A quick Q&A and then into the screening. David was just happy to sit down and rest. Playing Antonio in Merchant of Venice was taking a lot out of him, though it was amazing to be bouncing off Sir Ken as Shylock and Tom and Juno as Bassanio.and Portia. Tickets had sold out in minutes, people – fans of all of them, were flying in from all over the world to see Shakespeare. To see them tread the boards – to see four actors all hailed as the best of their age at the bards 400 birthday awards 18 months ago. He was nervous about it – of course he was, there was a lot to live up to a lot of pressure, but creative energy was amazing and with Juno and her dad co-directing he felt in very safe hands.   
He looked around the theatre to see Tom and Juno, Elizabeth’s other Dr Laing and his wife – Elizabeth had insisted they be here and he wasn’t going to argue. She had her head resting on his shoulder looking content, though tired. His hand was sitting protectively on her stomach, a dead give away, if he hadn’t been told this morning, that she was pregnant again (he’d joked they’d be catching him and Georgia at this rate).   
“You’re a pretty good match maker,” Elizabeth whispered realising where he was looking.  
“I’m the master,” David joked and Elizabeth nearly pissed her self laughing.  
The end.


End file.
